Call My Name
by lotuskasumi
Summary: Chapter 5: When Clara comes to, she finds the Doctor waiting at her side. Both are quick to agree that if they're going to get to the bottom of this, then they have to trust each other enough to put off all lies. Hand in hand, side by side, they choose each other over fear. (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara. Rated T for psychological horror elements. Eventual romance, if you can believe it)
1. Calling

_I promise you one day  
>I promise you always<br>We'll make it out one day  
>I promise you always<br>_– The Birthday Massacre, "Weekend."

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><p><strong>Chapter One<br>**

What little dregs of the wine still remained in Clara's glass looked like a splatter of blood. She gazed at the lonely little bead trembling on that dark blue blot, and watched as it swayed back and forth when she began to pass the glass between her hands. She did this carefully, gently, making sure the glass did not hang for a single second without the cradling comfort of her fingers to support it. Though it was little more than a nervous fidget, it had been done with a considerable amount of thought and the same sort of sombre grace that often proceeded a sigh so long and weary it made her shoulders sag, her posture sink, and her spirits dig deeper into their grave. As she did now.

She was _tired._

Clara took a breath, held it in her chest, and released it in a long, low sigh. It trailed off around her. With a the little prodding suggestion of the wine coaxing such strange thoughts from the back of her mind, she imagined the way it would fan out in the near-dark kitchen like a fog, like a cloak. Some place in which she could hide for a time... But only for a little while. Only until she could trust her own two feet to do more than stand, but carry her on.

But to where?

Clara tilted her head as she considered this. Her flat, for the first time in a very, very long time, felt too dark, too quiet, too_ – empty. _It was her flat, yes. It had been hers for some happy months now – almost at a full, proper year. But with justherself in residence, it felt more like that ending part of a track where the music fades out, where the seconds exist only to count down to the end of silence. Being alone felt like a lapse between one melody and the next, and that's how she felt standing there now, breathing slowly in and out – that's how she always felt when the Doctor was gone.

And this was fine. It _would _be fine – she would make it fine. She had to start learning how.

_But still... _Clara stopped that thought before it go far. It started itself again, unbidden, more clever than she could be. _But I still..._

"Stop it," she said to herself slowly, lowly, the way she would often pull herself together before, during, and after a long, heart-rattling cry. "Stop it now."

And so she stopped. She waited.

It was quiet. _She _was quiet. And the longer that Clara listened to the silence, the quicker she realised with a dawning, cold bit of clarity that the silence was not just from where she was, but from _herself._

"_Silence is also a sound." _The Doctor had said that once. _This _Doctor, this unknowable, inscrutable, but not beyond refutable one who could make her her heart seize up and shatter so fast it must be a kind of gift not often utilized in the earlier regeneration.

But that was wrong, wasn't it? Clara moved the glass to her other hand and held it tight, fingers trembling. _Remember Christmas? _She asked herself. _Remember _twice_ on Christmas? _She did. She didn't want to think of it – so she thought about his words again, his strange riddle that had long ago made her laugh to hear it.

"_Silence is also a sound. There's some places without a noise to be heard, but that lack of noise is far too _loud _to be true."_

"_How can any of what you just said make sense if silence itself is just the lack of sound?"_

"_Because silence can simply be the sound of a place or a person, if they're lucky enough."_

Clara hadn't thought what he said made much sense until this very moment, until she was alone, truly and absolutely alone for the first time in... God, how many weeks had it been? Did she know? Could she care enough to count them? They'd barely been separated since the fiasco that had been Christmas, than the post-Christmas surprise holiday. Even as this new self, the Doctor had always just _hovered _there, appearing and lingering for longer stretches of time than those few weeks when he'd up and vanished and taken the coffee with him.

And he was gone now – she'd told him to go, demanded it, all but yelled it. And he'd said nothing. Nothing at all – nothing but her name.

Clara moved the glass to her other hand and held it tight. She didn't want to think about that. She couldn't help but think about it, so she asked herself again: _How long has it been since you were last alone like this?_

"A while," she said out loud, testing the sound of her voice, listening to the way it cut into the silence. But the effect didn't last long, so she had to say it again. "A while. It's... it's been a while, okay? And I'm not sure I like it."

Clara didn't regret sending him away. There was little room in her heart for anything like regret regarding that decision. She simply disliked what led her to do it. She felt this in the very second she'd shut the door to the cupboard and paused, gulping down a quick rush of air and blinking back the tears that had been maddeningly, traitorously present right before him. No, she didn't regret leaving – but she damn sure didn't like being made to leave. And in tears as well.

It's not that Clara hated to cry – she simply hated letting certain kinds of people see it. Unkind people, uncaring people, people who could look on any cry for help and barely allow themselves to shrug it off so great was their apathy, so present was their utter lack of anything like understanding. Such tearful displays felt far too close to showing off a tender, still aching wound to a person made of thorns and nettles and glass, a person who called himself a man of healing yet didn't know the first thing about how to help when it mattered; a person whose touch could inflict more damage no matter how much gentle pressure was applied.

Clara put a hand to her head. The wine was thinking for her, but she could not deny the truthful tenor of her thoughts no matter how bitter they were. Hell, as far as she was concerned, the wine could do _more_ thinking for her – it would certainly give her brain a rest after the taxing, ruthless day she'd had.

Taking her eyes off the little bead of wine in the bottom of the glass, Clara moved her gaze up to the window again. Hanging above in the bruise-blue sky, the moon was full, bright, a dizzying distraction. She'd been staring at it for most of the evening, taking calculated, thoughtful sips from her glass, savouring the bitter taste of the wine on her tongue before it cut down her throat. It burst like slow fire in her stomach. Warm like blood, steady like a summer rain – that's how wine was for her. That's how wine was meant to be enjoyed. And tears as well. Because they were starting up again, slowly at first, forming a drip she could push back with her knuckles and quick, deep gulps for air. But soon the tears came to be too much and soon, too soon, her own clutches of air were not enough. And then the tears were pouring out like a vein hacked open in a gash, and Clara was crying, and crying deeply, the kind of tears she hadn't let herself cry in a long, lonely time. She set down the glass lest it shatter in her hands.

She didn't know how long she stood there crying. Time was never kind to a grieving mind, and doubly so for a heart that had grown far too familiar and none too fond of the sentiment. All Clara knew was that it all exhausted her, and so she bowed her back so low until her spine and all its notches became a sickle's end. Clara steadied herself against the counter in her kitchen, nails digging into the wood that had withstood the careless grazing of falling cutlery and clattering glass cups. It could surely endure her clutching, clawing hands.

"I hate him," she said, but it wasn't an entire truth. She hated what he did, hated that he had let himself do it, that he couldn't assess and understand himself well enough now, even now, to put his own self into check. Clara hated the distance he could wedge between his ability to be sensible and the gift of the senses – for what, she had once asked him, was the point of having two hearts if not to re-enforce what the one already felt? He hadn't liked that question and she hadn't liked his lack of an answer.

"I _hate him_." She let the words, tremulous and airy like little beads of unsipped wine, slip out into the darkness filling up her flat, cutting into it like a blade. The silence was pressing in on her again, and Clara wasn't sure she could handle the weight of that just yet. "I hate him – I hate what he did."

But she couldn't go on like this. She knew she couldn't. And so Clara closed her eyes, counted backwards from ten, and made herself a promise._ Pull yourself together when you reach zero, _she said. _You have until the count of zero to stop these tears, take a breath, and walk on back to bed._

It was a lovely plan, really. Ingenious in its simplicity. But it was never meant to happen.

Clara reached three when she heard it – an inverted scream like a gasp that stretched out long, rattling, and cold. She shivered and spun round, eyes flying open, mouth falling down into a horrified _O _at this sound that wasn't quite a sound, but was just one tone above silence.

Nothing was behind her – as she expected. But the sound came again, lower, shorter, like a kind of moan that breaks off when there's far too much pain working against one's ability to breathe. And for the first time that night, Clara began to doubt she was really alone.

"... Hello?" she asked, testing the silence, the darkness, and that awful, wretched sound that could have made her cry again for pity's sake alone. Clara dug deep beneath the aching in her heart to find the store of courage not yet depleted, not allowing herself to move from the kitchen until she was sure she held the feeling tight. She waited until it burned through her fear, dissolving the terror in the same way steam would rise screaming from the old-fashioned kettle – and only then did she take a step forward. And then another. And then a pair.

"Hello?" she called again, louder this time, listening to the way the cry echoed and arched over her head like a crown lowering, like a cage descending – but that was absurd. It was as silly as the thought that silence was a sound. Cries were only physical things when you meant them as tears.

Keeping her steps light and one hand cautiously raised, not quite certain what she would do should she come face to face with whatever was _making_ that sound, Clara continued further back into her flat. She thought the noise was coming from the spare room, the nothing room, the all-purpose room she would so often rush into when the Doctor had visited –

But that was _before_. In the past. Not now. Not anymore, if he had any sense left to him. Not for a while, at least.

Clara hesitated at the door to this room, her ear hovering against the white wood, listening hard. The cries were no less closer nor any less muffled, and she felt her hand tremble and slip as she grabbed the knob, twisted, and pushed the door open.

The door swung into the darkness. A pale bone white strip of light from the moon leaked in through the windows and the thick, shadow-dark curtains, revealing an utterly empty room.

All at once the crying picked up again, a long, awful, howling gasp of despair that made her skin prickle and set her hair standing on end. Clara's already tear-swollen eyes prickled with fresh traitor tears, but she let them fall in blips and streaks down her cheeks, over and around her chin, and down to the open collar of her dress. What did it matter now if she cried again? There was no one here. No one to see. No one but herself – and Clara would never begrudge herself the indulgence of a well-deserved crying jag.

"_What a good cup of tea can't cure is perhaps a job best left for tears."_

"_Who said that?" _the Doctor had asked – this one, this new one.

"_My mum," _Clara had told him before taking a long, pointed sip from her own mug. But he hadn't quite grasped her meaning, and she wasn't quite sure how to tell him without hurling the mug at his head.

Clara put her hands in her hair, flattening the palms down hard against her ears. The cries continued uninterrupted, just as before – no less diluted, no less muffled. What was happening to her? Panic? Stress? The wine again? She doubted that – the bottle had been perfectly harmless on other nights.

And that's when she realized it was coming from inside her head.

But whoever was making all the internal, idea-obliterating noise was absolutely, utterly, and without a doubt not _her. _Clara told herself this out loud to make the truth contain a force that thoughts alone couldn't possess. "It's not me – it's _not_ me – it's not _coming_ from me." She rocked back and forth as she said it, needing the comfort that a self-made cradle could grant. "It's not _me."_

Another gasp. Another rattle. Another cry. And she whimpered along with it, until –

Clara's mouth flew open and the one word was out of her lips so fast, so loud, and in a tone so desperate that it would have been embarrassing had she room left in her heart for anything but the panic. "Doctor!" she cried out once, twice, then again, louder each time until it drowned out the crying. "Doctor – Doctor, _please_!"

Through all this, and with a determination that was as devilish as it was commendable, the crying continued. But it couldn't quite drown out a different kind of howling once this phased slowly into the room. This new sound was the sort of inverted screaming that had, once upon a time, brought Clara something like hope, similar to the way the stars must cheer up the hearts of those adrift in sky and sea.

_There's a voice inside and it's not mine. There's a voice here in my head and it's not mine. _But whose? And how? And oh God, _why_?

The Doctor found her crouched on the floor, hands to her head, tears streaming. He regarded her the way you look at any crushed, cornered, terrified thing – with fear and pain locked up as one and the body locked into place, absolutely motionless. But then Clara pushed her hands down, moved them up, and passed them over her face to smear her tears and run her nails down her cheeks in a frustrated tug that left pink scrapes behind – and suddenly he could move. Just as quickly as he lingered, hesitant and uncertain, he was there. Crouched with his back bowed and shoulders arched, the Doctor was there in front of her, hands hovering but not landing, eyes searching but not grasping, mouth open but no words escaping.

That is, until she said: "You came back?" Clara took a long breath after she said it, as if her lungs were struggling to find a balance between speaking and breathing. "You actually came _back_?"

There was a thorn in her tone as surely as if it were sticking out from the middle of her tongue. That, too seemed to be a fat, bitter thing dripping venom. The Doctor watched her mouth as she spoke before he moved his gaze up to her eyes – oh, those eyes. There were tears glistening inside them again, blinding her, alarming him.

He played her words back inside his head half a dozen times before he answered. "I heard you call out," he said, as if it were an answer no more simple than a greeting. "You... you were crying."

As if noticing his hands for the first time and how they still hovered just above her shoulders, ready to hold or pat or shake or offer _something,_ the Doctor clenched his teeth, tightened his lips, and pulled his hands back. They twisted and bent and began to tear at themselves as he watched her, curious, thinking, already guessing and dismissing a tome's worth of possibilities that could have made her call out for him. He'd wait. He'd ask her. He'd let Clara say it for herself.

But she said nothing.

"... What's wrong?" he asked, because clearly something _was _wrong, and she had also quite clearly shot past any particular point of being _okay _long before he arrived.

"I thought I told you to go _away_," Clara hissed, her hands falling limp and useless down to the floor, fingers bent in and nails just scratching the surface of her palm.

"You did, yes," the Doctor said, looking carefully at her tears, looking even more intently over the expression she wore. It was like a collection of masks cracked and hastily bound together, masterfully moulded to fit her face. And it wasn't an expression he knew.

He ought to have known it, surely. He should know what she was feeling – he should know what she was _showing. _But there was a strange, smeary blot across his vision, the way an artist moves her thumb across a charcoal smudge, creating shadows and shades, the suggestion of darkness around little bends of light. He couldn't see her, he couldn't _see. _There was something in the way.

The Doctor held up a hand, as if this distortion were a curtain he could pass aside –

And Clara knocked his hand down, away, thinking he meant to reach for her.

Silence became the sound of the room and the pair of them, crouched on the floor, facing each other but seeing nothing. The Doctor looked at her, waiting, watching, some distant part of himself already mourning.

"What's wrong, Clara?" he asked again, softer this time, looking down at their hands. All she had to do was reach out a finger and she could be touching him. Just one little shift of a single, thin digit and she could touch him, and he in turn could feel her. How strange that he should focus on such a thing when only a few minutes ago he had felt his hearts close up and shudder as the sound of her screams blared out and wild and loud inside his head.

He'd been dreaming when it happened – he'd been dozing where he stood, his eyes sliding into a focus deeper than the typical, external vision when all of a sudden Clara's voice was crying out, shrieking, calling for him. The Doctor found himself moving on instinct to the sound of that voice, responding at once to the awful power of those tears and that bare, raw fear. How he hated hearing his name be said in such a tone – how he hated himself for being the probable cause. But now that he was here, he could hardly see what use that presence would have, or what little possible good it could do. Unless being there was simply the point?

The Doctor looked at the small gap between their hands and thought, perhaps for the first time since he looked upon the cracked mirror and beheld this face, of closing it himself. He thought about it. He considered it again, and then –

Clara lifted her hands to perch them on her knees. "I want you to leave again," she said. She looked at him as she said it, waiting for him to move, to understand. It was easier to say a cruel thing when you looked convincingly sure about it. "I want you to _go_. Now."

The Doctor put his hands onto his own knees, getting ready to stand. And then he heard himself say, speaking from a point of his hearts he didn't fully understand why he still had, "One more question – that is, if I have your permission?"

_No. Why should you? _"What is it?" she heard herself asking, almost in spite of herself.

"You'll answer it, then? I have your word?"

"I'll answer it if you go – and my word is _not _what you should be asking for right now."

The Doctor nodded. "What's _wrong_?" he asked a third time, because sometimes third times did tricks and charms even he could marvel at. "What's scared you – what's happened?"

Clara thought about being cruel – thought about it, seriously considered it, and then dismissed it with a tremendous effort. She licked her lips, replaced it with the edge of her teeth, biting down hard until it hurt – because the hurt took her out of the crying that hadn't quite died away inside her head. It had only trailed off into muffled gasps, as if whatever or whoever were making that mournful racket had reason to silence its cries upon the Doctor's arrival – and she liked that connection as much as she liked the idea of swallowing glass.

"I can hear... crying," she said, listening to the whimpers below her every word. Saying this out loud was strangely harder than any confession she had ever been forced to make. "And I know that I'm crying right here so I know what you'll say, but I know it's not me because it's – Doctor, it's... They're in my _head._"

The Doctor surprised them both by reaching out to hold her hand. It was a convulsive, impulsive, tight grasp that made Clara recoil from the unexpected touch – but he held on tighter for a moment, squeezing with all the strength he had to spare. His fingers slipped off, back, away, and his hand returned to the perch he'd made of his knees. Clara found herself considering something like regret for the loss of that little bit of warmth he'd shown. She wasn't sure when she'd get it back again.

He stood up and Clara followed, head tilted back, her eyes fixed on him. His were on hers as well, giving life to an expression she didn't want to understand.

"You're going?" she asked, distracting herself from his sadness.

"You told me to go," he said.

"You're still going even after what I just said?" she asked, half believing, half doubting, head fully reeling. _Stop crying, _she said to herself, to the new voice, to the both of them with equal swells of anger._ Stop your bloody crying, I have enough of my own to do without you._

Silence grew between them again – but it was a familiar sound, a noise that Clara surprisingly, and somewhat terrifyingly, could almost understand. It was the sound of their silence – _theirs, _the two of them, together. A mixture of patience, curiosity, and a newly made tangle of doubt and fear. _That's us now, whatever we two are, _she thought. _Whatever that 'us' actually means._

"Then what do you think I should do, Clara?" the Doctor asked, drawing her from her thoughts. Asking such a question required the same amount of effort it took to reach a hand in and tear out a lion's tooth, and they both knew it – but neither one of them quite cared.

Clara could have laughed to hear him ask this, but the energy it would have cost her seemed far too dear to be wasted. She shook her head as she looked him over, not bothering to hide her disdain. "What do you _think _you should do when a friend says something like that?" she asked.

The Doctor turned his head away as he thought about this – but not for long. The words were free from his mouth as soon as they snapped to place inside his head. He turned to look at Clara again. "I'll keep the TARDIS here if you feel like dropping in," he said, not quite an answer to her question – at least, not a direct one. But for the moment it would suffice. "And I'll – I'll be here. There – in there. Waiting. Yes?" The question hung between them the way a wound waits for the bandage to come down to seal the ache in. Tender, terrified, trembling.

For a moment, Clara said nothing. She wouldn't pity him for this new-found lack of confidence he felt and so surprisingly displayed. His was an ego that could use a nice thrashing, she thought, and his was the sort of esteem that could be lowered several dozens of pegs and withstand hardly any deflation. But... He was here – what was more, he'd come back upon hearing her cry... Which was more than she expected, even if she didn't quite understand it. But the Doctor's presence there, now, in front of her, despite her having told him to clear off and go far away, was above and beyond what she had even _hoped _to see happen. At least, not until he grew too lonely to resist her again.

_But it did happen, _she said, forcing the thought around the whimpers that had faded into just a few broken whispers. _It did happen. And here he is._

And he could keep on waiting until she was ready to talk to him.

Clara cleared her face of tears, took a breath, and did something like a laugh. It made them both flinch to hear it – it sounded far too much like a sob. "Do what you want," she said, not looking at him. "I'm off to bed."

"And what about the crying?" he asked, surprised that he'd even have to mention it. "It's still in your head, yes? I could... I could listen to it. If you'd let me. If you'd like."

"If it's still there in the morning, be my guest," she said, keen to be out of the room before she relented to this sudden display of compassion – but it was too late, however much he decided to show it in abundance.

Clara turned and moved fast, walking across the small stretch of hall to her bedroom in quick, eager steps – but she left the doors open both to the all-purpose room and to her own. She waited, counting down from five, before she glanced over her shoulder, deciding it was safe to look. One of the corners of the TARDIS was visible from where she stood in between the vanity and the bed.

She wouldn't admit it to the Doctor just then, and indeed she could barely say it to herself in that moment, but the sight gave her heart just the smallest, invigorating lifts. Air flooded her lungs and a comforting silence filled her head... But it lasted only for a moment. Just one moment, and then it died. The crying inside her head picked up again, and with it away went peace.

_It's the wine, _Clara told herself, wanting to believe even this paper-thin, utterly obvious lie. _It's the wine doing it to me. I'll sleep it off and wake up and everything will be quiet and fine. _She might even tell the Doctor to go away again. But she didn't quite believe this, either.

The Doctor waited until the light in Clara's bedroom snapped off before he turned and walked back into the TARDIS. He began to shut the door behind him for a second, an unconscious act born of instinct – and then he stopped himself, pausing, reflecting.

Grabbing a book off the nearest shelf and apologizing quietly for using it as a make-shift door stand, the Doctor propped open the door and took a step back to admire his work. The shadow of the TARDIS stretched across the carpet in the all-purpose room Clara had once admitted was his to make use of however he pleased – just as long as he took whatever mess he accumulated back with him. From where he stood in the console room, without bending his head or shifting on his feet, he could see just a small bit into Clara's room. His eyes passed over the edge of her vanity then to the gap between that and her bed. If he listened closely, ears straining into the silence, he could hear her breathing, not quite steady and even enough for sleeping, but approaching something like solace and relief. That was good. That was _something. _It was better than how she sounded when she'd left him at the school, and far better than how she'd been when he arrived here tonight.

His thoughts turned once again to what she had said about the cry – a cry that was not hers, in a voice that did not belong to her at all. Whose was it, and why had it chosen hers of all minds to so rudely occupy? And why _now_, after he had already so spectacularly failed her?

No matter how he pressed the questions, no answers were supplied. All the Doctor could do – all the _both_ of them could do, separately, detached, and perhaps eventually together – was wait and see.

And hope, he supposed. Hoping couldn't hurt much, even if it also didn't do much in the end.

_But still_... the Doctor thought, and so did Clara as well, curled up under the blankets and sheets and pillows and warmth of her bed. _But still, I... _

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><p><strong><em>Notes:<em> **This idea has been in my head for a while now, and I didn't think I would actually get to writing it until the series had aired in full. But _KtM _hit me so hard that I honestly couldn't resist sharing it early. So I hope none of you mind, yeah? Thanks for reading!


	2. Unfamiliar

**Notes: **Wow I honestly didn't expect people to be as kind/receptive to this fic as the feedback has so far indicated. Thanks, everyone! It's really and truly appreciated. Things are going to get progressively scarier (or at least I _hope _someone finds it a bit scary) as the chapters continue, but I'm hoping that the main thrill lies in the showing how these two actually learn to rely on and open up to each other more. So... let's power on through, heh.

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><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

Clara awoke from a half-forgotten dream of hallways and cobwebs and shadows to the blissful sound of silence – a short-lived, dearly valued silence. The voice returned – not as a scream, as she expected and dreaded it to be, but as an indistinct, toneless humming. The kind you bend your ear to and listen intently, trying hard to place the melody. The kind that makes you twitch and flinch, glancing over your shoulder on what ought to be a cold, lonely night. It was as if whatever voice was taking unwelcome residence inside her head had a penchant for singing to themselves just underneath their breath.

Her Gran used to do that, could even fall into the habit now when Clara went round to see her on their monthly Sunday lunches. More than once would Clara still walk into the little house to hear that soft voice come trailing out from around the corners, the words faint and failing, a fragmented suggestion, like how the train of a dress might lag just a few paces behind the one wearing it. Gentle, soothing, like the feel of velvet moving across a cold, lonely hand.

This voice was nothing like that, Clara thought, her mind still eager for the sleep she had abandoned (and rather grumpy because of it). This voice was the biting catch of rope on a throat already sore with lacerations. It was a nuisance, a hindrance – and it was a thing to pity even for all that. Because it was screaming for a reason, surely. Something made it scream, something _made it _make all those wretched sounds – and something was making it happen _inside her head._

She pitied the voice as much as she found herself gnashing teeth and clenching fists, frustration boiling high, at the thought of it. Her heart ached for it as much as her heart ached _from _it.

_Like the Doctor_, she thought, in the way honest thoughts can hit a just-woken mind, like a rock breaking through the thinnest crystal glass. Clara started to laugh until her teeth caught on the edge of her lip, biting down hard to keep the laughter in. That wasn't nice, no. But it was honestly how she felt right now. And sometimes the truth wasn't so kind.

So why did it weigh on her like pockets full of stones, hard, ruthless, jagged-edged and meant to make one sink?

_Don't think about it, _she said to herself. And then she said it out loud, to make the command bear more weight than the guilt. "Don't think about it. It's too early to carry thoughts like that in your head." She hadn't checked the time yet, though judging by the angle of the sunlight and how it stretched in a thick wedge over her bed, Clara figured it had to have been past noon. And that was plenty early to her, considering she just woke up.

She wasn't surprised the Doctor had let her sleep in. He could show small scraps of decency every now and then, when sleep and her dire need for it were as plain as a plea on her lips and a glare in her eyes. Though he also chose those times to talk loudly to himself, his voice echoing out from the half-open door of the TARDIS, spilling out to fill her flat with its echoes. To let her know he was still there, waiting, wanting to be heard – or perhaps just filling up the silence with something familiar. Clara couldn't always tell.

Perhaps he didn't mean anything by it. That was certainly possible. All she knew, was that the Doctor hadn't made a sound so far today; she would have noticed if he had. His voice and the sheer force of his presence, even at a distance, had never failed to wake her up before. Like a hand reaching in to pull at the strings of her heart and tear each one out by the root – and yet it didn't always hurt.

With a force of will that required her to take a deep breath, Clara set aside the humming in her mind for a few seconds more. Just a few seconds, really. A minute was all she needed not to think about the only thing she could reasonably think about, apart from what to do with the man who might be waiting for her in the other room. A man who was being uncharacteristically quiet.

Clara sat up, kicked the blankets and sheets back, and crawled to the edge of her bed. _He won't be there_, she thought, not stating a belief, more a hunch. His silence was too pronounced to be deliberate – it had to be made by sheer absence. _He absolutely, definitely, more than likely will not be there. _It didn't matter what he _said_ about waiting around, especially since he had proven how quickly that waiting could turn to walking off without a backwards glance. She thought she'd have learned that by now. It only mattered what he _did_.

But just as Clara craned her neck to peer around the corner of her doorway, eager to see into the room across the hall, the Doctor appeared in it, doing very much the same.

They stared at each other for a long, quiet moment. An outside observer might say they were a mirror image of the other with their open, watchful expressions despite the contrast of their positions: Clara, crouched on her knees and hands; the Doctor leaning half-tilted, one hand gripping the door-frame.

It was Clara who spoke first. "You're still here?"

"That's a funny way to say good morning," the Doctor said, pale eyebrows lifting.

Clara glanced at the clock on her night-stand just as the Doctor pulled up the sleeve of shirt and coat to peer at his watch. It was afternoon – fifty-one minutes precisely.

"Afternoon, then," he amended, not needing to look at the expression on her face to know the question was there. "I don't see why I have to be so exact, it's still a funny way to say it – and _yes, _I'm still here. As I said I'd be." He tapped his fingers against the door frame, creating a quick, toneless rhythm that clashed with the humming in her head. "Might have promised it as well, can't be sure. It's been a long night."

"A long night of what?"

"Talking and planning. Most of the talking happened while I was planning."

"Planning what?" she asked.

An eyebrow arched up as he leaned his shoulder into the frame, his hands slipping into his pockets. "Didn't get there," he said, unashamed to admit this failure – which set Clara on an immediate edge. "Still planning. Can't tell you a plan until it's planned, can I?"

"Could give a hint," she said. It was almost a command. Somewhere beneath it all, the voice stopped humming and started to laugh.

"Wouldn't know where to start hinting," the Doctor said, half-shrugging, full to the brim with sass. "That's just it, Clara – I don't know. And I don't know enough about what I don't know to _say_ what I don't know. I don't even know if I could find the time to pull a hint out of that. Could you?"

Clara settled down until she was kneeling into the mattress with a slump that spoke volumes of her current level of patience. There was none, not even a hint of a blip. Her usual, seemingly inexhaustible levels of saintly endurance (which she prided herself on more than a little bit) had dipped lower than her usual store, and it wasn't just that awful voice in her head, either. It was a tangled messy mass of faults.

The moon could be blamed, as well as the Doctor – two reasons that, however logically sound, would barely make sense if uttered to anyone else aloud. _I just went thirty some-odd years into the future to find out the moon was actually a giant space creature's egg and my friend who I thought would always be there no matter how or when or why I held out my hand cleared off, and then I told him to clear off only he came back once he heard me crying and I swear to you, I'm not mad. _And the voice surely had to own its fair share of her depleted patience – but there was something else. Something Clara wasn't seeing, wasn't _saying_, that weighed on her again like more stones added to a steadily tearing pocket. Stone upon stone upon stone creating a long, jagged tear that would soon cause it all to come spilling out – but all _what_?

Her heart gave a twist. The voice inside laughed again, louder. Delighted.

Clara put her fingers to her temples and began to massage the sore skin there. She had no patience, yes, that was true. And she had a knot to undo that was making it hard to breathe and think and simply _be, _a multi-tasking venture that had never caused her much trouble before – well before the Doctor. All the carefully lined up threads of her life were slowly weaving across and under and around until they became a tangle even her hands found it hard to trace and ease – but that was fine. It would have to be fine. She'd _make _it fine. Clara would force herself to do, she had to, she must. She wouldn't slip here.

"Stop talking, Doctor. Please."

The Doctor waited, watching her. She could feel his eyes on her, patient and attentive – which almost made her laugh. _He's patient now, and what am I? _Clara hardly knew. She opened her eyes and dropped her hands to her lap, weaving the fingers together into a little web.

And then she nodded once, imperceptibly slow and small. But the Doctor knew what she meant.

"Still got that echo chamber in your head, yeah?" he asked, his low tone belying the crass phrasing.

Clara nodded, warming her hands against the other. She'd gone far too cold.

"Then it's time we did something about it."

"We?" she repeated.

The Doctor studied her askance. "Do pronouns confuse you this much on every morning, or it just on Saturdays? No, you've been fine on other Saturdays before now," he added on fast, correcting himself. Clara watched as the Doctor made a move to walk into her room, taking one long, steady step. He got about three paces in before he halted, going rigid as if crashing into a sightless wall.

Clara's heart was thundering again. _He can't hear it, can he? _She wondered, keeping her face composed even as her eyes went wide. _He can't do that. He would've said if he could. _He wasn't even close enough to touch, yet Clara was sure he could hear the caged, wild thing her heart had become.

The voice stopped laughing.

The Doctor said, "Remember those weekends we spent overlooking the Trabian ice crater as a favour to the Jotunn Queen? That was a whole host of Saturdays you had no trouble with." His voice was too soft, too kind, too _much_.

Clara shook her head. "What are you doing?" she asked, her own voice soft with the strain. But she held up a hand to stop him, only belatedly noticing he hadn't opened his mouth to speak at all. "No, stop, don't answer. I don't want to know. I really... _really _don't want to hear you try to be charming or clever or – or god knows what else you've got in mind."

Silence. Only the voice started up again, humming louder, a buzz that made Clara's teeth set on edge once more. She scraped them against the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, but tasted nothing but bitter ash and regrets.

"Can you still hear it?" the Doctor asked. It was the sort of question one might ask when they already know the answer, the way any man of medicine might query a clearly suffering patient.

"I can, yes."

The voice hummed louder as the Doctor took another step. "Care to share it, then?" He waited until her eyes were on him before he began to speak again. "You said you would if it was still there by morning. Might have promised you would, too."

Clara watched the Doctor take another step closer and then crouch an arm's length away from the foot of her bed. Her heart hadn't quite settled yet, but he didn't seem to mind the sound – if he heard it. She watched his hands move from his pockets to a little web of fingers themselves, imitating her pose... Or perhaps mirroring it again. That made her smile.

"How does that even work?" she asked. "I just let you into my head and _trust_ you won't mess around where you shouldn't?"

He nodded. "That's the general idea, usually," he said. Then he unwound his hands, opening them, offering them, gesturing as he added, "And it's only a _part_ of your mind – a part you don't mind sharing for a time. And you're already being forced to share the whole of it, so I hardly think my request is too out of line."

"I didn't hear a request."

"I did. Heard it plainly. '_Care to share it_?'"

"Right." Clara closed her eyes and cursed herself silently.

The Doctor let this pass without a remark. "So. May I?"

Clara's teeth slid against the inside of her cheek again. "What do I have to do?"

"Just focus on the voice and let me listen," he said. It was so simple it could have been the truth.

"That's all?" she asked, eager to believe.

"That's it," he said.

Clara nodded. "... Just _be careful_," she said, closing her eyes as the Doctor held out his arms, hands reaching for her face.

"Tried that once. Not sure how well I managed," he muttered, which made her smile. Her heart twisted again.

The voice inside hushed itself as the Doctor's fingers came to rest on the very same spots Clara had just been massaging. Did it draw back out of fright, or was it merely playing a trick? Clara frowned, wanting to be angry, wanting to find a way to reach in and tear the voice out, make it show itself – but then she realized that was, perhaps, what the Doctor had intended to do all along.

"Doctor – "

"I'm listening, Clara," he said, addressing the panic in her voice and the frightful thought that made her speak at all. "Just listening." His touch was warm, solid, roots rejoicing in a rich soil inside which to make their bed. But Clara couldn't help but feel so thoroughly _disconnected_, as if there were that crystal wall again sliding down to slam in between them.

The voice picked up its laughter at this, making Clara draw in a long, tense breath. It was the sort of ragged, raw, bitter rasping laugh that made her think of crows choking. To say it was horrible would be too generous and vastly understated. The Doctor's fingers flexed, the touch staying rooted in place as Clara bowed her head. She could feel his hands flatten to cup her face, an involuntary gesture to be sure... But he didn't break away.

"... I can't stop it from happening," he said, honest and true and soft, so soft, where had he learn to be this gentle? "But I can distort it. Might make it a bit easier to drown out."

"None of those answers actually tell me what's going on, so I think you'll find that my answer would be _no_." Clara opened one eye and peered at the Doctor kneeling on the floor next to her bed. His expression was as much of a mask as she'd ever seen it be, so calm and placid she might have envied it. Like a sleeping man – or perhaps a dead one. "Do _you _know what's going on?" she asked, if only to have some life come into that face she continued to gaze at him. "A straight answer this time. And an honest one – _please_." She deserved that much.

He knew she did. "Well I'm still very much in the _process_ of knowing – but hey, I could scramble it? Turn it into a nice, relaxing tune." His eyebrows rose, thin little arcs of pale, dusty grey. "How partial are you to the Habanera? Quite a bombastic pick-me-up if I do say so myself."

Both of Clara's eyes were open now. Was that allowed, with him still digging into her brain? Funny that she couldn't feel it – she didn't feel a thing. Was that deliberate on his end? "Doctor? Answer. Now."

His lips tightened into what might have been a frown. "I asked _two _questions already and you haven't answered a single one. It's your move, Miss Oswald."

Would that voice ever shut _up_? Would her heart never stop its awful shuddering, stumbling rhythm? If the Doctor couldn't hear it in the doorway, surely he was aware of it _now, _here, so close and so _connected _to her. "I don't want it scrambled either, I want it _gone_."

"I heard you, Clara. Just... Hold still, right? I'd very much prefer to avoid leaving any lingering mental tethers. The feeling could be mutual if I took a guess."

"Can that happen?"

"It could. Pretend you're a statue. Hold your breath if that helps."

Clara put her hands on his wrists and almost pulled his hands free of her face. She certainly thought about it and had the action in mind when she raised her hands, but when her fingers curled around his wrists and pressed down against the warmth and the skin and shifting bones – she stopped. She couldn't say why, not even to herself.

The Doctor tilted his head as if working out a strain in his neck. "Strange," he said, reflecting. "Very strange. You haven't been to the Abyssal Chasm in that funny little section of Andromeda without me, have you?"

Clara rolled her eyes. "Forgot to mention it. Silly me. Ran out there just last week while you weren't looking. Never thought you'd find out."

The Doctor's eyes were open now, fixed entirely on her jittery, shifting gaze. His was steady, the colour of the sky just as it decides to storm. Hers was a bird that was still far too restless to land despite the growing roar in the wind. When Clara stilled herself enough to look, truly _look_, it was at his face, his eyes.

Clara chewed on her lip. He was too close to her, much too close. His hands were still on her face, his touch gentle, but the idea of roots came to mind again as she thought of pulling back and moving away. It couldn't happen as easily as all that, even if the thought took so little effort to make. It was all easier to say than to do.

_Is anything easier done than said? s_he thought.

The answer didn't come from herself. _Yes – silence. _

The Doctor looked pointedly at her hands, still holding onto his wrists like shackles. If he heard any of that internal diatribe, or had any part of it himself, he showed no signs. She let go of him. "It's a joke," she said, forcing herself to take a breath. "I was kidding. Really."

"Aren't jokes supposed to be funny?" he asked. "Is that what you think funny is?"

_Why isn't he letting go? _Clara stared at him. "So. You had a listen. What's making it?"

The Doctor studied her. "It doesn't sound familiar to you? Not even a little?"

"Should it?" she asked. Is that what he was saying? Was this a hint? Clara hoped not and hoped so – what an awful thought to be strung up between, like needles and thorns and no rest anywhere.

The voice hissed, shifting into another low laugh.

"You tell me," he said.

Clara shook her head. Her voice was more sturdy than she thought it might have been in that moment. "I've never heard it before, no."

The Doctor snatched his hands away and stood up in a motion that was more fluid than Clara would have expected. She watched him turn and stride towards the door, talking as if to himself. "Got it. Yep. Have it all sorted. Almost like a plan, but this one's finished."

Clara stumbled off the bed, intent to go after him. Pulling her robe and mobile from where she'd flung them across chair and vanity respectively, Clara hurried out to the hall. She watched as the Doctor all but sprinted away from her, missing the room where he'd parked the TARDIS. He was headed for her kitchen. She followed, confused, pushing her arms into the sleeves of her robe and sliding the belt around her waist once, twice, knotting it tight enough to hurt.

"What's sorted?" she asked, raising her voice so he could hear her.

He didn't answer.

Clara sighed and moved into the kitchen on weary, heavy steps. She studied him closely from the doorway, her arms folded against her chest. He was moving fast, restless, as if there were shards of glass under every step. The electric kettle was already plugged in, ready to start steaming, while the Doctor peered around her cabinets for clean mugs.

"Doctor, you haven't said anything – " she began to say. A high, clear bell cut across her words, silencing them.

It was her phone. Clara shoved her hand into her pocket and all but yanked it out, glaring at the screen.

_Danny_.

Why wasn't her hand moving? Surely it should be easy. Just touch the screen and hold the phone up – nothing difficult about it. _You've done it before, _she said to herself, watching the screen, listening to it ring, knowing the Doctor's eyes were on her, knowing the voice inside her head had started its rasping raven's laugh again. _You've done it before – why can't you do it now? _But she couldn't move. Couldn't, wouldn't.

_Why_?

Clara jammed her thumb into the screen, hitting ignore. A harsh, sharp second passed, and then she slid her thumb across the screen again, unlocking it and tapping around until she got to her messages. He deserved _something _at least. Something was better than nothing, and nothing was still better than a lie.

Which is what she ended up doing. Her teeth ran against her cheek again, scraping it raw, drawing blood. The harsh bite of iron coated her tongue as Clara watched her fingers type out the lie, however kindly it was meant.

_Awful headache. Can't talk. Call you later._

She held her finger hard against the little silver tab on top of the phone, shutting if off. The Doctor's shadow fell over her hands. Clara looked up, the voice inside drawing a long breath.

There was a mug of tea in his hand, piping hot, contents swirling. She could smell the citrus rising up in little whirls of steam. He'd chosen the Lady Grey, her favourite. "Is that the boyfriend?" the Doctor asked, eyes on her phone.

Clara took the mug from his hand and brought the brim to her lips. "It was – it _is_, yes." She took a long, fortifying sip. It burned all the way down, coating her throat with sweet fire. "But _we _are not going to discuss that. _We _are not going to discuss anything like that. _We," _she added, drawing the mug back and forth between herself and the Doctor's chest, watching him sip his own mug, "are going to get this thing out of my head and go back to our separate ways again. … Why are you smiling?"

And he was smiling, no matter how he tried to hide it between sips. "You're saying _we," _the Doctor said, eyebrows lifting up again. "I wasn't allowed to say it, but for you it's fair game. Is that it? Did you take a sudden liking to it again?"

"Stop smiling," was all she said. It was really all she had left to say at this point.

Silence fell again, if she ignored the rattling breaths and rasps rising up from the corner of her head. But it wasn't like the silence after the dream lay discarded. It was their silence, a shared silence – a silence Clara had ached for last night, before the voice came, before the screams tore the Doctor's name out of her heart and throat. However tangled her thoughts might be as she stood once again in the kitchen reflecting on all the things that were too complicated to dare to say, Clara could not deny to that one corner of her heart that refused to be cheated that she had _missed _it. Silences with the Doctor were the closest thing she might get to peace and comfort, and even those weren't meant to last.

Clara took another long sip, reflecting on the man standing before her, who had taken a sudden interest in the new collection of postcards she had hung up on her fridge. He still had so much to prove to her, so much to make up for, it was almost a miracle that he had the nerve at all to stand within arm's reach of her. Clara tried to gather a few small thoughts of comfort, facts even she couldn't deny. He'd come directly to her when she called his name, and though she couldn't understand _how _he heard her, the fact that he did and acted on it meant more than she felt was the right time to say.

_He was here – he _came _here. He heard me and he rushed back and he stayed. _Shocked was an understatement. Touched didn't even come close.

… _But what about on the moon? _She thought, unable to stop herself. It was as if that other voice were talking up again, the one that had told her silence could be a thing easier done than said. _What about then? _Clara had no answers for that behaviour nor did she have a satisfying explanation in mind to put that question to rest. She also didn't care to make an excuse for a man who could damn well put together a proper one himself. All she had to do was press him for it.

_Do it now, _she said, urging herself with every passing second. The voice hummed and began to sing again, its voice rising up and burning like a firework ascending, shrieking as it ignited. _La la la. _Careless, thoughtless, as if it had no worries in the world now that it had someone else's head for a home. _La la la._ Clara didn't recognize the melody it was using but it brought to mind strange images and sounds. Snow. Soufflés. Hammocks and hammers and metallic screaming. An asylum.

_Do it now. _But she wouldn't. She couldn't. Clara opened her mouth, knowing that every word spoken next had the power to break apart a man that was trying to tend to a wound still too sore and fresh to be healed. Could she give him points for trying? Perhaps, but only if there were more time in between the injury and the effort.

_Do it now. _The voice was singing this now, singing it in a parody of the Habanera's melody. And try though she did to wish for it to clear off, Clara knew it wouldn't stop. The voice couldn't resist making itself into a nuisance that was driving her near to madness, and when she did find a voice that was strong enough to speak, she heard herself saying something she hadn't at all expected: the truth. Newly discovered and so wondrously strange, unearthed like a rare prize from the darkest pit.

"It's a man's voice," Clara said, staring at her mug. She pressed it into her left hand and lifted the right, tapping her finger against the side of her forehead. "Up here, I mean. I don't know whose it is and I don't know why, I just – it's a man's. And right now he's singing."

"_Singing_?" the Doctor said, lowering his mug before he could take a long, last sip. His expression was openly disgusted, but it changed upon reviewing Clara's reaction. He toned it down to simple unease. "I hope you didn't take the Habanera suggestion seriously. _That _was a joke."

"Well he did take it seriously," Clara said, grasping at air, at straws, at anything that could keep her head afloat. "And you – you said something about chasms? Andromeda?"

"Oh, I'm _so _happy you asked," the Doctor said, smiling down at her. But his smile was all teeth, no heart – or maybe that's just what he was like now. Too much bite with so little tenderness. Clara couldn't be sure. She only knew it made her heart shudder with more than just dread.

Clara knew that smile. She knew it like she knew that look in his eye. And she could feel the thrill burning alive like a flame racing from wick to dynamite inside her veins. _He's going to ask me. He's going to ask me to travel and I'm going to say yes, and – _"No. No, no, no. No, Doctor. We are _not _going there."

The Doctor looked at Clara's finger, pointed and brandished like a knife between them, before lifting his eyes to her expression. He could see the struggle to keep her mouth still and her eyes narrowed – but he couldn't place the cause of the war. "That's going to make things a bit trickier if I'm off on my own solving your problem," he said. "Do you have any better ideas to getting the voice out of your head because really, I'd like to hear it."

"What does Andromeda have to do with this?" she asked, staring up into his eyes that for once didn't shrink back from the prickling, prodding force of her gaze. "You know something. I _know_ you know something – and don't give me that _not knowing_ riddle again, it was awful the first time."

The Doctor's lips tightened into the slightest grimace. "I don't know much," he said.

"Tell me."

And he did. "I might have done a thing while you were sleeping," he began.

Here it was, an answer at last. Oh how she dreaded it as much as she rejoiced its arrival. "What sort of thing?" Clara asked.

He took a breath, his chest rising up, out, the words filling him before they came out in a steady, even flow. "A scanning thing, which happened around the time when I was doing the talking thing and the planning thing – all of which required absolutely no effort on your part since you were sleeping." The Doctor finished what was left of the tea in his mug and tapped his fingers against the side, creating a rhythm that contrasted with the melody inside her head. "All of which _may _have resulted in pinpointing a rather troubling frequency resonating from the funny part of the Andromeda galaxy, which is now crashing itself directly into your inferior parietal lobule."

Clara stared at him.

"Something's screaming out from the dark part of another galaxy, and your brain may be picking up the signals," the Doctor said, rephrasing the explanation. He spoke every word with such ease that it might have comforted Clara if she weren't so wretchedly confused.

"_May _be_?_"

"Might be," he amended. "Is."

"How?"

"That's what we're going to find out. Together. Because the next part certainly does require your effort and participation. You didn't have any plans for the weekend, did you?"

_Just a Sunday lunch with Gran. _"Bring me back before the day's over," Clara said, her hands steady, her voice mimicking stone. "I'll go as long as you have me back in one day. You've done it before. You can do it now." She would be sure. She would precise. She wouldn't think about how her head had somehow become a transmitter for something that existed several lightyears away from where she now stood – and she _certainly_ wouldn't think about how the Doctor had explained absolutely nothing about the whole damned process. Did he not know? Was he lying again?

"As you wish," he said quickly, with only the slightest air of what could be a strain to the words, words lace with a sadness Clara refused to admit was even there. Then she caught the way his breath came at a quiet, low hiss in the sentence's end. She could feel her heart crack.

The voice in her head heard this vulnerable little gasp of air as well. And it laughed.

"And then?" Clara asked the Doctor.

If her barrage of questions unsettled him the Doctor didn't let it show on his face – only his pale eyes looked wide and uncertain, showing an emotion Clara didn't name. It was like the way the sky used to scare her when she was a child, hanging upside down off the edge of the playground swing. You could fall into it and keep falling with nothing to land on, with nothing to hold tight – falling and falling and some people might even say it was just another way to fly, but those people must be mad. Surely.

The Doctor's voice cut across her panic, allowing her to draw in a little bit of air, tense and absolutely necessary. "... And then that's it. End of the trip. I'll bring you back before the day's over, just as you said. Now, if I were you and trying to drive a hard bargain, I _might _have said something a bit more limiting. 'Before the hour,' would've been a nice place to start, but let's be fair. We've been talking and I have about fifty-three seconds to say say something that would convince you to get into the TARDIS by the end of this sentence." He paused to take a breath, hoping she wouldn't notice how much he seemed to fumble in every sentence, sentences he could barely control before they were tumbling out of him. It was as if his mouth were malfunctioning, he just couldn't understand why this should be happening – but Clara was already moving.

The Doctor watched her slam the mug down on the counter and dart out of the kitchen, his mouth hanging open. Then he followed behind her long enough to peer round the door-frame and watch her walk down the hall. "Clara?" he called after her. And then, realizing what that stride meant (straight up, shoulders back, chin undoubtedly raised in a perfect imitation of confidence), he added: "You're going in _that_?"

She didn't turn around. "I'll get changed on the way there," she said. It was easier to say a brave and bold thing when she didn't have to look too long at the person hearing it. "Better move fast."

The Doctor didn't allow himself to smile. Not yet. "What changed your mind?" he called out. His voice was louder now and less soft, having shed its earlier silken kindness. The Doctor watched as she moved further out of sight.

When she reached the room where he'd parked the TARDIS, Clara stopped just before crossing that threshold. She turned to peer over her shoulder, her hair flying. "Who said it needed to be changed?" she said, lifting her eyebrows up to mirror his own look of surprise.

She stepped out of view before his smile could fix in place, needing to disappear before he could see her own.

Clara bit the raw side of her cheek, tasting blood again. It didn't hurt much now that the wound had some time to settle, and it certainly didn't sting as much as the lies had, nor the sight of a smile she shouldn't enjoy as much as she did. It was the same with the silences they could share over cups of tea so thoughtfully prepared: all of these things were aches that came packaged with bliss, a pain as precious as it was cruel.

Was that her life now? Was that what _she _was now? Enamoured with the bite and the tenderness, somehow finding a sweetness inside every sting? Clara didn't have a headache before, not when she'd sent that message along to Danny, but she could certainly feel one growing now. Like an axe had cleaved the back of her head, making skull and organ within tremble and throb, pain lanced across her forehead and made her shut her eyes.

_Don't think about that. _If there was anyone who could get her mind under wraps, even with an unwelcome lodger resting inside it, it was Clara. _Don't think about that. Focus on what you can bear. _She opened her eyes and smiled wider, forcing it for no one but herself. There was a whole wardrobe waiting for her inside the ship, an entire trove of clothes that she admired as much as she coveted.

Clara stepped on board the TARDIS and hurried further in, making for the lower level and the enviously expansive wardrobe contained within. She heard the door slam shut behind her before she understood what that meant: someone else was in the console room with her.

It was fear and nothing else that made her turn fast to greet them.


	3. Shiver

**Chapter Three  
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The voice in Clara's head snickered as she took a cautious but curious step closer to the doors, her bare feet clashing with the chill on console floor. The cold moved up the back of her legs, spiking straight through her Achilles heels as if she were implanted with an iron, unyielding rod right to the spot. Clara had felt fear like this before, quite recently in fact, and she had learned that the only way fear could win was if she stopped working against its pull.

A thought struck her as she passed the console again, drawing her eyes up to the ceiling, the assorted web of metal plates and cold, jutting angles. "Did you do this?" Clara asked the ship, knowing she could be heard even if she hadn't voiced the question out loud. It made her feel better to hear herself talk; thoughts had a habit of falling into place with relatively more ease once she did. "Are you trying to scare me? Thought we were getting on better now."

Clara took another pair of steps forward, thinking to find the Doctor – but she didn't get any further than a half step.

There was someone standing between her and the door.

Clara tilted her gaze to get a proper look at the figure. It was a girl shorter than Clara by almost a head, with pale, silver-white hair cut into a stylish bob. It was a severe, strict, and far too rigid hairstyle for a child her age – but then Clara took a look at her face, at the expression stamped across the delicate, doll-like features, and she corrected herself with a suppressed shiver. This was no child. Or, if she was, she was a child far too aware of terrors and truths no child should come to know, at least not so quickly.

The girl's small eyes were lined with a red haze that matched the colour of them, scarlet and raw, the way Clara always looked after a long, gutting cry. The irises were red as well, deep and crimson, like blood against a stark white wall. Her solemn face, so miserably bleak for one her age (_Nine at the most, or maybe ten? Twelve's certainly pushing it_) added to the cold depth of her stare, reminding Clara again of children who'd seen too much too quickly, children who'd lived more than their years belied. You didn't have to travel the stars to see such children, didn't have to go very far at all in fact. Sometimes all you had to do was take a walk down the block and pay attention.

Clara peered into the little girl's eyes and wondered what could have put such a look on her face. She wondered this again when the eyes were lifted to point her way, the gaze filled with barely disguised disdain.

"Hello there," Clara said, forcing a smile and moving to crouch down. But she froze in place when the girl spoke.

Her voice was as cold as her eyes. "Don't waste your breath," the girl said. "I'm only here to pass along a message; I'm not here for you to pity."

Well this was certainly an odd thing to say. "You don't have to pity someone to say hello to them," Clara pointed out, keeping her smile locked in as she hunched down to the girl's level. It was a matter of deep, rattling shame that Clara actually felt _afraid _of this little girl, that her inclination to smile, ease, and comfort was far removed from this current exchange. _Not like it wouldn't be just a tiny bit justified, _Clara assured herself, ignoring the consistent snorts of laughter from the other intruding voice in her mind. _I've no idea how she even got here._

Perhaps she didn't _have _to get here. Perhaps she always was.

Clara looked up at the ceiling again, eyebrows lifting. "Is this a new interface?" she asked, remembering all too well the last time the TARDIS had put forth a face in order to interact with her. Folding her arms, Clara tapped her fingers against the sides of them and took in a quick breath. She could smell lilacs.

"Can you imitate perfume now as well?" she asked, speaking half to the ship and to the little girl.

"Think I'm fake, do you?" the girl demanded, her words a bite that made Clara stand up straight. Even the laughter in her head had ceased at this line, drawing in a quick, sharp breath as if taken aback by the ire Clara faced.

"Didn't say fake," Clara corrected. "Said interface. So – are you?"

The girl scowled and glared all the more fiercely at Clara for this statement. Clara felt her smile slipping. The other interface hadn't done that – the interface that wore _her _face hadn't done anything more expressive than blink with a blank, placid expression at Clara and all her distressed questioning. Was it an upgrade – or could it actually be something else?

_But what else could it be, really?_ Clara wondered, arguing against the intruding cold hand of fear that cast a dark shadow over her thoughts.

The girl stepped closer, her long skirt swaying with every step. Clara watched as the girl reached out and dragged her little pearl white nails across the back of Clara's hand. She was _cold_ – but what's more, she could be _felt._

The effect was immediate, the aftermath awful. Clara stumbled back, taking in a long, hissing breath with her teeth clenched. "What are you?" she asked, grateful that her back-step had taking her right up against the console. She took comfort in its presence, drawing strength from the steady vibration of the ship humming beneath her fingers. It was almost as if Clara weren't alone.

"Like I said. I'm a messenger. I'm here on a request from... my friend." It was the closest thing the girl had to a stammer, but she didn't let it linger long. She continued, "He wanted me to tell you how much he's looking forward to finally meeting you."

"Who did?" Clara demanded, no longer pretending to be kind. "What are you talking about? Who _are you?_"

The girl tilted her head slowly, steadily, a fluid yet mechanical gesture. "Rubicon," she said. "That's my name. You should remember it for next time, Clara."

"Clara!" the Doctor's voice called from the other side of the door. "Wrap it up, would you? We've got an abyss to shout at."

Clara opened her mouth to answer him, but her throat had grown hollow, the words ripped clean from the back of her tongue. The voice inside sighed, so cruelly pleased, but even the arrival of her temper like a swiftly struck match couldn't get Clara's voice back again. The shock of the strange child's arrival, compounded with everything else that had piled itself mercilessly on her conscience in the past few hours, had worn Clara down to the point of a very thin, fragile twig. Thoughts about persevering and enduring became nothing more than words on the wind, a pitiful withered leaf torn off its branch.

_A leaf... A leaf to take me back home... _

The Doctor tried the TARDIS doors again, and Clara could hear him sigh. So close, he was _so close_...

"That's all I had to say. I'll be seeing you again," Rubicon said, turning to the doors as well. She kept her head turned to peer at Clara over her shoulder, her dark, ruby-red eyes having all the impact of staring straight into Clara's heart. Perhaps that's why her eyes were so red and rimmed with such a raw, vicious hue. It was stained with the colour of all the hearts she'd viewed. "I'll come back the next time he has something to say to you."

Clara found her voice long enough to force out the words, "Who do you mean?"

But it was the Doctor who answered. "_You_, clearly," came his muffled reply, his voice as sharp as the fear that prickled Clara's skin into goosebumps. "Almost finished in there? Even _nearly _decent would be fine with me, you know."

Clara wet her lips quickly, eyes darting from Rubicon's impassive, merciless face to the door and the voice of the Doctor behind it. "Just – just a minute!" she called to him, before lowering her voice as she addressed Rubicon instead. "Who sent you? Who is it? You tell me right now or else I'll..."

If she thought her voice sounded placating and gentle, Clara knew better than to buy in to such a lie. Her words were as strained as her tone, pleading, desperate, strained, the same way she'd been when facing the class on her very first day at Coal Hill.

"He's waiting for you," Rubicon said, as if this explained everything. "He wants to see you again."

"Who?" The urge to pull at her hair was reaching critical levels, but Clara suppressed it. The voice inside snickered but she clamped her teeth down hard enough to nip at her tongue, drawing blood.

Rubicon's eyes narrowed. "Didn't that man tell you? You really ought to have _listened_, Clara. _'Every lonely monster needs a companion_.'"

Clara's heart went cold.

Rubicon continued. "Well, go on," she said, looking Clara over with one last, decisive sweep. "Don't keep your companion waiting." She turned to the door – and then phased through it, taking Clara's breath away. She vanished the way a reflection pales in a window at night, the source of the image too weak to endure all that shadow alone with no light to help it prevail.

_Like a ghost, _Clara thought, but she was shaking her head before the thought could take root and flourish into a belief. _No – no it can't be. There's no such thing. There never is._

The door unlocked just as Rubicon passed through it, and the Doctor pushed his way in with all due haste and awkward, grasping grace. He stared at Clara, still in her robe and most assuredly _not _changed (though decent was still a word he'd use to describe a robe, provided it didn't develop a softness fault). Confused would be a kind way to describe how he felt, but just as he prepared himself to comment on this lack of a change he paused, reflected, and _saw her_.

It was a mournful sight. Tears were in her eyes and her shoulders rigid, raised, trembling. It was the kind of shakes that required immediate tending to, demanding some kind of care and compassion, but he found himself unable to move. Watching someone's pain, witnessing it, processing it, letting it take root and scar your hearts was often far more moving and meaningful than simply rushing forward to tug them into your arms. All the affection in the world couldn't be enough to drive away fear, but _understanding_ that fear, making the effort to try – ah, now that was all the difference in the world.

Silence fell again – but it was a different level to their shared silence. It was an absence of sound and words left unsaid, a void full of secrets waiting to be shared. Not just Clara's, but the Doctor's as well.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked, his voice low. "What's happened? … Is it that voice again?"

Clara took in a long, fortifying breath. He expected an explanation, then discarded it. He expected a dismissal, and then dismissed this too. He would stop trying to expect anything from Clara, would wait instead to see what emerged from her mind and heart and lips, and then respond accordingly to the impact. He would carry on with this until they figured out just what had taken residence in the part of her mind no one but her own self should be able to reach.

"Doctor," she began, not looking at him. How could her tears stay frozen in her eyes, he wondered. What power could she possibly have to lock them there, to keep them from falling, when some barely managed to hide their grief inside their chests? Where did she learn to do that – where, when, and why? And because of who? The Doctor thought he knew.

He continued to wait, watching her.

Clara took another breath. "Yes," she heard herself say. "Yeah, it – it was the voice." She lifted her eyes and showed something like a smile. "It's _really _not the best of singers, you know. Someone ought to have killed that dream stone dead."

She turned her back on the Doctor without another word, hurrying down to the wardrobe and all the divinely detailed disguising possibilities contained within. The Doctor watched her go, recognizing that hunched, rock-rigid tension that flattened her shoulders from his own posture in faces of yore, from the backs of others as they stormed off and away. Some of them were proud, some angry, some weary – but they were all of them, always strong, strong past the point of sanity. It took just as much strength to be gentle and kind, even more so to one's self. Clara's back was the back of one who suffered yet denied themselves the right to feel it openly, to claim the release they deserved.

The Doctor watched Clara go, knowing she had lied to him but now knowing enough to guess why. His hands went rigid at his sides, long fingers stretching, knuckles slowly folding as he curled his hands into fists. With a sudden jerk his hands opened again, and he snapped his fingers to swing the TARDIS door shut behind him. Just like that, the liars were closed in together.

The Doctor took a breath, his nostrils flaring. He frowned. It smelled like lilacs.

* * *

><p>Clara got dressed in a hurry, choosing colours as dark as her mood with a splash of red tartan to suggest something like life. Black cardigan, red skirt, black tights. Her boots were the same as usual, the pair she so loved and had worn in through many a chase across alien planets. The dust of ages were worn into her soles and heels, and yet none of their strength or grace seemed to impart itself to Clara.<p>

She took a look at herself in the full-length mirror, struck by the realization that her outfit was just one design choice away from what she'd worn at Christmas, on Trenzalore. _When we first met. _

_No, _she argued gently. _When I met _this _one. We've met before, dozens and dozens of times, even if he didn't remember it properly._ It was hard for even Clara to process sometimes, though the memories of the act made by a heart that was for a moment more brave than it was afraid frequently returned to her in dreams.

_Every lonely monster needs a companion_. Yes, and Clara had thought herself very much aligned in the latter role – but Rubicon's word stuck with her the way a knife can stick into the unsuspecting expanse of a turned back. _Monster. She all but called me a monster. _What could Clara have done to earn such a title? Unless, of course, it wasn't about something Clara _did _but something she _did not_ do.

Clara waited for the other voice to snicker, but she waited in vain. The voice was gone. Not muffled, not quiet – _gone_.

Clara listened, her heart frozen in her chest as she held her breath. Was it really gone? Did she imagine it all along somehow? She didn't want to think about that, didn't even want to consider the possibility. But the Doctor had _heard _it – and he might be many, many things to her right now (callous and cruel and dismissive and so bloody _blind_) but a liar – a liar for the sake of giving her comfort? Even now, Clara couldn't be sure.

Starting on the trip back up the little set of stairs to the console's upper floor, Clara's hopes sank as quickly as they had inflated. She heard it again – the voice hadn't gone anywhere at all but had lain quiet, waiting as if it were hovering just behind her shoulder, leaning in to her ear. As if it were listening to her thoughts, biding its time in between every idea to the next. But could it even do such a thing? Psychology and mental studies of any kind were far from her field of speciality, let alone her ability to understand not for a lack of trying, but purely for a lack of keen interest. What went on _in_ the mind mattered less when compared to what can come _out_ of it, Clara thought. Poetry and psalms and songs and stories, narratives and philosophies, arguments and edicts – Clara loved a creator, but had little time to lend to the blood and sweat and arduous technical process of creation.

What little she knew about voices, both of thoughts and of the dangerously disembodied kind, told Clara this: a voice in one's head couldn't _listen_ – unless it wasn't just a voice, but a _presence_. This thought hit Clara with all the grace of a concrete wall giving a crushing kiss to glass. She settled down slowly on the mini set of stairs leading up to the main console, pressing her hands in between her knees and losing herself in a long, sightless stare.

This is how the Doctor found her only a few seconds later, catching sight of her as he paced around to controls, breathing in deep the lilac smell that spread through the air. Clara's slender, arched back and the heavy, downward slump of her shoulders was a posture the Doctor recognized from mirrors far more often than he could count. Falling hopes and leaden doubts – that's how Clara looked to him.

Without saying a word, the Doctor sat down on the step next to her. He couldn't see the use this would serve, or indeed what purpose, but he did it and he thought about the act only after it was done, when it was too late to take it back or undo. He did it because –

"Are you scared?" he asked.

Clara shook her head, leaning her face into the veil she made of her hand. "I'm too tired to be scared," she said. "I just want it all to end."

The Doctor made an effort to keep his hands still. "It will," he said. "That's what I'm here for."

"What, is that a promise?" Clara asked, lowering her hand as she peered at him. He was so close, close enough to touch. She almost had to dare herself not to try.

"... Yes," he said, surprising only her. "Yes, you could say it is."

Clara held out her hand for him to take. "Shake on it, then."

And, to the surprise of them both, he did. The Doctor held out his hand to meet the one Clara offered, and with firm glances and tightening fingers, they shook. They promised.

And in the back of the Doctor's thoughts, he heard it. The voice that had started to root itself so firmly, and so unwelcome, inside of Clara's head. _I promise you this for all the days of my life – I'll wait for you right here. I'll always be waiting here. Forever, if I must._

The Doctor pulled back his hand, wincing as if burned.

Clara sighed. She'd expected that. She'd heard none of what went on in his head. In her own head, the voice laughed. Toneless, humourless, and bitter. Laughter with no heart, only teeth.

* * *

><p>"What are you hoping to find there?" Clara asked once they had regrouped enough to gather 'round the console, preparing for departure. "This Chasm place really doesn't sound all too promising."<p>

"What makes you say that?" he asked.

"The name for one thing," Clara said, eyebrows lifting. "_Abyssal Chasm_ doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Maybe if it were called something nicer I'd be on board."

"You're already on board."

"Semantics," Clara said, lifting one finger off her crossed arms to accompany the piqued eyebrow, "are used only in desperation when the argument is bound to be lost."

The Doctor paused, considering this. "Who said that?"

"I did," Clara said. "Just now."

"You sure you weren't quoting anyone?"

"Apart from myself?" she asked.

"Yes, well – it was a noble effort at an aphorism. Now, overlooking lessons not learned from Shakespeare about names and meanings contained therein," the Doctor said as he began to set the course, testing a glance side-long at Clara to see her reaction. She was almost amused. That was a nice start. "It is indeed promising if you hope to find all manner of unsightly beasties that prefer the dark and learn their secrets."

Clara thought about this, choosing silence than a chance to contribute her thoughts. The voice within listened hard, keenly focused on the Doctor's insight.

The Doctor continued. "Life can thrive in the most curious of places," he said, twisting a knob, lighting and then unclicking the little panel of buttons in quick procession. "Against all odds and reason, defying external elements – even against its own will. Lives are curious things – most especially those that thrive best in shadows and darkness. We can learn quite a bit from them, if we only take the time to stop and ask."

Clara remembered the beach upon which they had stood only hours past, watching the moon hatch and break apart, only to have another restored in its place. An impossible and curious thing, with consequences both dire and divine. There was a weight in the Doctor's voice just now that matched his speech when he went out to meet the tides, but Clara thought she could hear something else beneath the words, something lurking in the depths that reached down to the core of both hearts. Something bitter, almost like regret.

The Doctor tapped two fingers against the monitor, interrupting Clara's thoughts. "Here it is," he said. "The Abyssal Chasm. Oh – they've made an _addition_. Built a whole little orbiting station to keep the place company. Because _that's _never ended poorly for everyone involved. Look at it, Clara," he said, jabbing the screen once more with a quick, long-fingered stab. "A mobile man-made moon."

"Say that ten times fast," Clara muttered walking over to join him at the screen.

"That's just begging for a mishap," the Doctor scoffed, shaking his head, eyes still on the screen and not the glare Clara was giving him. "May as well hang a little sign onto every window that says _'fresh meat._'"

"Are you actually making a joke out of this?" Clara demanded.

"I'm not," the Doctor countered. "What's there to joke about?"

Clara warmed her hands on her arms and studied the image on the monitor screen. The station – man-made mobile moon, as the Doctor was calling it – looked more like what she imagine an escape pod might be, plain in design and dire in its purpose: contain and preserve the lives lucky enough to stay within. The station hung over a bruise-purple swatch of space, the dust of ages smeared out like paint. Usually stars were clustered inside such fields, but there was no light inside this field at all – just the bruise, just the damage, like a wound oozing alone in space.

"They must have built the station for a reason, yeah?" Clara said, staring at the little speck of false light hanging over the bruise known as the Chasm. "That suggests they had a plan for the place. Doubt it included being slaughtered."

"It _suggests_, but it doesn't guarantee."

Clara frowned at that. "You said it was to keep the... place company," she said, "sounds like a guaranteed plan to me."

"Heard that, did you?" the Doctor asked.

Clara lifted her eyes to the Doctor's face. He was studying her with an effort both restrained and eager, as if he were focusing the finer points of his attention into his eyes while the rest of his face remained contained, held back, showing an expression akin to stone. Her knees buckled as she lifted her chin, his look cutting through her the way a kiss might, provided the force behind the lips had as much intensity as his stare did just then.

"'Course I heard it," she said, holding his gaze with a third of its focus. "I'm standing right here." Clara shifted her gaze from his face down to the console at the last second. "Besides, one of us has to listen to the other one. And that's usually me."

"... I meant it to be a serious question," he clarified quietly. "Can't be easy, splitting your attention in two places at once." The Doctor's eyes shifted to Clara's forehead, thinking again on the voice he'd heard not once but twice now, when they'd touched. Residual traces of the connection? Possible. But was it probable? He couldn't say. Mostly because he didn't want to. "That extra passenger must make it difficult," the Doctor said, his tone strangely tender, far more than Clara expected.

"He – it does, yes," Clara said, trying her best not to shrink back under the heat and heart of his gaze. One cup of tea was not nearly enough caffeine to prepare Clara for such a situation as the Doctor focusing in on her so strongly as he was right now. "Doesn't seem to make as much noise as long as you're talking. Probably doesn't like the competition."

They looked at each other, quiet, reflective.

"Permission to prattle, Teach?" the Doctor asked.

Clara smiled. "Permission granted."

And just like that, the tension dissolved in the air and became a cooling, comforting breeze that made the knots in Clara's shoulders ease and her fear fall back, not quite ignored but for the moment discarded. The scent Rubicon left behind was still in the air, tickling her nose each time she breathed, and she thought about asking the Doctor if he could smell it too, but the fear of his denial stopped her words dead in her throat. She would keep her conversation with Rubicon a secret until they arrived at the Chasm. Perhaps an answer would provide itself without Clara needing to say a thing about the haunting. A girl could hope, couldn't she?

The Doctor said, "It's an ambitious little head urchin, what you've got in there." He pointed at her forehead, coming dangerously close to prodding it, as if the mind within had offended him somehow. "It's not enough to call out across space, no, it needs to go the extra mile and do it from another point in _time_. Can you hear me alright in there?" he asked, leaning down to glare at Clara's forehead. The situation was so absurd she bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from laughing.

"_Show off," _the Doctor said, addressing the voice inside Clara's mind.

"Can you... not do that?" she asked, fighting a laugh. "Besides, how can you even tell? It's not a take one to know one sort of thing, is it?"

"It's - no," the Doctor started, glaring at her without a scrap of anger. "No, it's not that. It's because in the year 4443 the Grimtol Oscillating Observatory was both officially deployed and then quickly decommissioned while in the process of conducting research into the Chasm."

The Doctor turned back to the monitor and gave it a spin so Clara could see it clearly. He shifted his weight, leaning into the left leg while he dug into the pocket of his coat with his other hand, coming dangerously close to huffing contemptuously. "The whole doomed event was funded by an entrepreneur named Argus Blackpoole," he said, eyebrows darting up with amusement as he took a quick glance at Clara. "Seems he sent his personally picked best and brightest to study disturbances detected in the Chasm."

"So what happened to them?" Clara asked, not wanting to guess. She could sense the answer wouldn't be a comforting one, but the question had to be asked all the same.

_And what about the monster-companion conundrum? _She wondered.

"They were victims of an E.E.," the Doctor said, snorting. "Strange that they'd shorten it to two little letters, as if that somehow hides the fact that it's still an Extinction Event."

The Doctor spoke out before either Clara's own thoughts or the voice inside could reply. "The last transmission sent out by the crew shows a 70% mortality rate," he said, eyes narrowing as he read over the information the monitor let scroll by. "Only three were left after that: a professor and two of his student researchers. Graduates, gathering data for a thesis."

Clara listened close to the Doctor's words, to the tone that lanced through every breath. Hushed, low and deep, undeniably sombre. The Doctor was mourning even as he explained the disaster, compiling his grief into the same breath it took to accept what had happened, what could not be prevented from happening. She reached out to rest her hand on his arm, lending support and strength on an instinctive gesture. That he barely flinched this time warmed her heart as much as it cast a wound within it. He was still flinching, even if it was just barely. He still couldn't stand the weight of her hand, even if her heart was alive inside it, offering companionship.

The Doctor held his breath until Clara's hand lifted. Then he said, "The transmission was sent to Blackpoole's personal line before all communication was lost." And with a harsh, miserable flick of his fingertips, the Doctor patched the message through for them to hear.

It was Clara's turn to hold her breath as she listened to the message burst to life, bringing with it static, gasps, and the obvious sound of suppressed tears.

" – _been waiting here for us. That's what she said. Hair like snow and eyes like blood... Someone else can try to help him now... … Not enough. Never enough. We are nothing more than a bandage applied to a wound long festered – that's what he said. We were not a permanent solution, merely... useful. … Lilacs. She smelled like lilacs. She smelled... like... Spiders. There are spiders in the lilies. They wave us on, lining the path deeper in, back to where he waits... He waits... He wants to see her again..._"

Clara and the Doctor waited, but not another word was said. When Clara moved her hand to the Doctor's arm again, seeking strength just as much as she was looking to give it, she couldn't be sure but it seemed as if the Doctor leaned into her touch for just the barest, slightest of moments, needing support as much as he was silently lending his own.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong>Sorry about the wait! I appreciate the reviews and the messages. Your encouragement truly does mean a lot to me, especially since real life likes to interfere and impede a lot of my enthusiasm for doing just about anything. Next stop, Abyssal Chasm and (hopefully) some more answers.


	4. The Looking Glass

**Chapter Four**

The Doctor watched Clara from the corner of his gaze, sizing her up as long as she continued to stand next to him. Lost in thought, every silent word drowned out by a faint ringing rising up from the back of her mind, Clara stayed at his side for only a few seconds before she turned to pace away from him, staying silent. She crossed the console and made for the armchair on an upper platform, sinking into the seat and hugging herself tight. The light in her eyes was dim, her look distant. The Doctor turned to face her fully, tracing her movements with his eyes until the pull that wound between his hearts and her single, steady one forced him to move.

She caught him at it. Perhaps she even sensed the pull, even now – but that was wishful thinking, wasn't it? And he knew he couldn't let himself to that.

Clara's heavy veil lifted long enough for her to show something like a smile. "Have you ever been to this place before?" she asked him, curious.

He appreciated her attempt at the conversation. This he could handle. This was easy, even if what he had to say was mostly wretched, consider the context. "I had thought about stopping by for a quick hello," he said, striding forward and running his fingers along the edge of the console. Casual, unconcerned. If Clara could keep things simple then so could he. He could at least try. "But I didn't think it carried quite the same appeal as swimming with sand piranhas. They won out in the end."

Clara's crooked smile made him pause. What emotion _was _that? Her eyes were still heavy and loaded with what might have been tears if he weren't sure she wasn't even close to crying. _Grief, then. Or was it just tired?_ The half-smile was still in place, her dimple creasing deep with every lift of that smirk.

"Yeah, and we both know how that turned out," she muttered, laughing to herself. So she was happy, then? Or at least amused? He couldn't tell. Never had he found it so wretchedly frustrating trying to piece suss out a person's expression before – but no one went through all the trouble to bury them quite like Clara. Somewhere inside, he knew this. He knew this because he recognized it within himself. They were each other's looking glass.

"I never did find those cutters," the Doctor said.

Clara's smile became a grin. She laughed again, but he didn't like the sound. It was too wooden, too clunky, like the off step when one receives an injury. Something was amiss. "I'm sure they'll turn up somewhere. They'll come back to you in the end. As all things tend to."

The Doctor felt his teeth work into a grinding edge, molar on molar. How hard was it to show _one _look on _one _face, have _one _face show _one _emotion? Why did she have an arsenal of expressions? Of all the things to keep in a cache, he found this to be one of the strangest. But still, at least there weren't any tears. He couldn't handle those again. They'd cut him enough, and he didn't have to imagine how badly they had stung her.

Clara continued. "What brought you back to... To my flat?" she asked, changing direction in mid-sentence. She leveled him with a stare, lowering her chin, keeping her eyes pointed onto him in a most charming way. "And be honest."

The Doctor frowned. "I told you," he said, hands falling of the console to hang at his sides. He knew he still had to put in the coordinates for their destination, just as he knew that their departure depending entirely upon this exchange and what he said next. "I heard your voice. You called out."

Clara studied him, waiting.

He looked down for a moment. The weight of her gaze doubled back to reveal more of herself in that instant than perhaps she knew. She didn't doubt him, not entirely. She only doubted that it could have happened without doubting the source of the news. _Say it_. _Just say it. _He had to.

"You called my name, so I came to you . That's it." He thought of adding something more, something about how she shouldn't her suspicions kill the truth, but he didn't think she wanted to hear anything like that right now. Least of all from him.

Clara twisted her hands in her lap, picking at her cuticles. "Has it ever happened before?" she asked.

"Yes," the Doctor said, turning away from her so fast that the tails of his coat flapped, flashing red for an instant. He began to prod more buttons, moving around to where they'd been standing earlier, listening to the recording. "Of course, that was with different people under vastly different circumstances. Might have been a fair bit of slightly fatal danger involved. Attack of the killer Christmas trees, something like that – who keeps track?" he asked, not to himself, though he didn't think Clara would answer it either. "Who has the time?"

She laughed. It was the first honest laugh he'd heard out of her all day. It made him smile.

The Doctor looked up. And yet there it was again: her sad smile, as if her heart had cracked.

He couldn't know it, but Clara was pleading a scream at him inside her head. _Say it. Keep saying it._

"Though it did feel a bit different this time," he added, the words taking away her breath. "Still urgent and pressing, but I thought – " he frowned, flipping a switch, forcing his hand against the nearest lever. "—Thought it could have been a false alarm, considering your choice in parting words."

Clara waited. "But?" she prodded, sensing that one more word dangled there.

The Doctor's frown deepened, less at her accurate guess and more that it seemed to be written on his face. Perhaps he had his own little hidden store of emotions to which only Clara could access, see down and through and understand. Maybe. Maybe not. He'd have to be careful.

He put his hands on the console, steadying himself. That he needed to be steadied at all didn't worry him, not like it used to – he was getting used to how this felt, just as he was working hard at hiding it, denying it was even there. Like broken pieces left unglued, yes, that's how he felt in that moment – in the moment when she started to cry yesterday, in the moment when she turned from him and left, in the moment when he'd heard her cry out for him across all that awful space of time. Broken pieces left unglued and uncertain of repair. That was the power Clara had over him, and oh what a thrill it was.

"Doctor?"

"But it seemed worth the risk," he said, finishing the statement after a prolonged pause.

Clara's smile evened out at last. He thought he saw a flash of teeth as well, making her look momentarily wicked, delightfully impish. At least this was a smile he understood at last. Clever, charming, like that smile she'd down to him on that rooftop cafe all those ages and face ago, in the glistening shadow of the Shard.

The Doctor's hearts seemed caught in a trap designed to fit her smile perfectly, lined full of spikes and expertly crafted teeth, creating a too-tender ache inside. He turned away again, and fast, showing his back once more as he focused on the controls. He knew this was deliberate, a diversion. But Clara didn't.

"Are you excited, Clara? We've got a whole abyss to shout at," he said, eyebrows raising, expression brightening as he moved around to face her. "Still got some of that temper left over?"

"I'll see what I can dig up on a late notice," she said. Clara gave him a half-hearted, joking salute when he arrived at the final lever that would send them into flight. "Ready when you are, Doctor," she said. But he waited to see her smile before he set off, needing both the sight and the resounding ache before he could continue.

The TARDIS began to drone and groan. It was the only sound that cut through the silence that followed.

This silence continued when they landed. Clara was already up and at the doors, ready to leave without a backwards glance. The Doctor's voice made her pause.

"Clara."

Such was the power of only one word that it could stop Clara short. She looked back, eyebrows raising as she turned to him. "What's wrong?"

The Doctor wasn't looking at her. He scowled magnificently at the monitor, his silence forcing Clara to join him. She stepped closer to allow herself a look at the screen, trying to see what was bothering him.

"Doctor?" she asked again, not understanding what was there – or what wasn't there, to be more precise.

"There's nothing," he said. He pointed, tapping one long finger against the screen so that it shook. "_Look_. See?"

"Am I meant to see nothing?"

"Exactly, yes."

"What a lot of nothing it is," Clara mused, and then she caught herself, doubling back to frown at the screen. She tilted her head as her thoughts settled. Even the voice within her had fallen silent, contemplative in a way it hadn't been in minutes. It had laughed viciously all through the Doctor's earlier words, his all but heartsfelt confession about helping her being worth any risk of her ire. That it would choose now of all times to be silent only set Clara's teeth on edge. Either it was surprised too or it was enjoying their unease.

"Hang on," Clara said, putting her hand on the Doctor's arm to steady herself. "The Observatory's gone. Is that it?"

"Along with the object it was observing," the Doctor said, his eyes narrowing. "These eyes may be old, Clara – new and old at the same time, how does it work – but I certainly can't _see _anything that looks like a chasm. Do you?"

_**It's hidden. It's hidden and out of sight, wanting to be out of mind. Can't be hurt if it can't be seen – don't see, don't look, don't come near. BUT DON'T LEAVE ME!**_

The voice made Clara's heart shudder. She shivered and pulled her hand off the Doctor before he could notice anything was wrong.

"Could it be camouflage?" she asked, taking pointers from the voice. If it was going to intrude on her so mercilessly as that, Clara would put the bloody thing to use.

"Sorry?" the Doctor asked, looking down at her. He studied her quickly.

"What if it's... y'know." Clara wet her lips before she started again, forcing herself to breathe evenly. "What if it's disguised somehow? Hidden just out of sight?"

The Doctor considered this, nodding after a pause. "Then it's a system of defence I mean to break through – and one more answer to demand from whoever's responsible."

Clara eyed him. "So your money's not on Blackpoole?" she asked.

He looked at her as if he had never considered such a thing. "No – not that I have any money, mind you," he said, pointing at her as he spoke. "But if I did it wouldn't be wasted on petty bets. Terrible habit to have, Clara. No," he continued, repeating himself with the faintest hit of a sigh. "This is something a bit more sinister than an entrepreneur burning his money away on a good deed."

Clara shrugged. "Never suspected him myself," she said. "Just named a name." She stepped back from the console and folded her arms, still shaken from the voice and the grand, terrible presence it had kicked up inside her head. The Doctor watched her closely as if he could sense her unease – and perhaps he could. Clara thought with a flash of panic about what he'd said earlier, something about lingering mental tethers. Could he figure out what she was thinking – or worse, _feeling_? Her heart nearly stopped at the thought.

"Go on, then," she said, nodding promptly at the Doctor when she forced herself to look at his eyes again. Even through all this, the sight of them soothed her. Such changeable, well-adored eyes so easy to get lost in. Not even the echoes of that dreadful voice and its bizarre interruption could rob her of the solace she took from sharing the Doctor's gaze, however short a time it lasted.

The Doctor stared. "Go on what?" he asked.

Clara nodded to the console behind him. "Go on and do a clever thing that'll get the Observatory back so we can figure this out," she said.

"Still set on getting back by Sunday?" he asked. Was it a trick of the light or was he almost smirking?

Clara mirrored his look, matching it as well as she could, even down to the effortless charm. "Right after I shout at a space abyss," she said, nodding.

"Yes, ma'am," the Doctor said, turning away and getting to work.

Clara watched him, enjoying the sight of her dearest friend in his element. She took heart at his confidence, at the courage of it in spite of the unknown – always, relentlessly, an endless march of almost arrogance. She'd seen him be arrogant, had seen it and protested it merely hours ago. Now she was seeing it diluted, pared down to the harmless core.

Her thoughts drifted again to the voice, to the hint it had given her – or had that been a warning? Clara wasn't sure, but she thought she recognized the voice. Something about the pitch and tone... And that accent. It was hard to misplace.

_Can't be him_, she thought, shaking her head, needing to move in order to complete her denial. _Can't be. Really, it just... can't. _Perhaps if she kept telling herself that, she would believe it soon.

A few more minutes passed as the Doctor fought hard to pinpoint just what had gone wrong, and what could have taken an entire chasm in the sky along with it. Clara watched him, refusing to let her thoughts take root in her mind, focusing instead on his every movement, the subtle shifts and twists of his expression as he worked. If the Doctor noticed how intently she was focusing on him, he said nothing about it – surely he was far too preoccupied to lend much thought to the weight of Clara's gaze.

On the contrary. He felt her eyes and the full force of her attention. Remiss though he would most certainly be to use this as inspiration for showing off, the Doctor couldn't deny to himself that her presence, her focus, and her undeniable interest certainly _helped._ He was trying to do this more often, you see: honesty, at least in the quiet moments inside his head, where they had no way or means of escaping. He told himself it was for his own good – there was no telling what damage the unvarnished truth might do when let loose and free, running wild without a short chain to tug it back and down again and keep it tamed.

At long last, the Doctor gave a quiet cry of victory. "There it is," he said, grinning. "Found you."

Clara, who had sank back against the railing lining the console, perked up, wearing her own hard smile. "All set to go?" she asked.

The Doctor nodded. She trotted off to the doors, reaching to the locks. It occurred to Clara in that moment that this may very well be her last trip – not for the stakes of the situation, nor the impending, dire situation of what they might find once those doors opened. But because despite the comfort she was learning to take in his presence again her heart was still a broken mess of jagged pieces jarred from their frame. _If this is the last one, _she thought, having to swallow a huge gulp of air at the very thought, _if this is the last one then please, please let it be worth my while. Let it be worth everything before we're gone._

"We've already gone," the Doctor said, catching her by surprise. It was a strange thing to say, and a bit delayed given that he'd already answered her question without words. Or had the nod been to something else?

Clara turned to peer at him, her eyes wide, mouth slipping open. "Sorry?" she asked, her voice almost a squeak.

The Doctor stared at her, puzzled. "You asked if we were all set to go," he said. "I said we've gone."

Clara didn't understand why she should feel disappointed. He could only read minds if he was touching her, if she _let _him and she had – with great reluctance, but she'd let him in all the same. She was happy to have that connection broken, wasn't she? _Right_?

The Doctor continued. "Can't look back now, can we?"

"Nope," Clara said, emphasizing the last little pope of the word. She pulled the doors open, her back turned to him.

Clara didn't notice the way his face shivered, transforming first from fear to absolute fury. She had already turned away by then, staring out the open doors into what she had hoped would be a room in this tricky, disappearing Observatory. Instead she was looking directly into the barrel of a gun aimed at her face.

"Who are you? Don't move!" the woman cried. At first Clara thought her accent was American, until she realized that there might be something trickier with accents now that they were out into space. The woman was dressed not as a soldier, as Clara had expected, but as... Well, as some kind of student, to be honest. She had a uniform blazer on and a matching skirt, the knee-socks torn and worn, frayed, showing patches of her dark olive skin beneath. There were bruises and cuts dotting her legs, some half-healed, most still weeping and sore. Whatever this woman had been through, it'd been hard fought and her survival bitterly won. Clara noticed, in the strange way that time can stretch itself out through eternities when someone is scared, that there were cuts across her face as well, shallow slices as if she'd had to fight someone off. For the gun or because of it? Clara wasn't sure.

The Doctor swept forward, his teeth bared and eyes blazing like a divine fire. Hell hath no fury like this man in this moment, or in any moment in which Clara's safety was not an absolute guarantee. He shouldered himself between Clara and the woman brandishing the weapon, his sonic out and pointed flat at the gun.

"Take that out of my friend's face," he said, his voice coming out in a rushing hiss of rage, "Or I'll jam every possible functioning circuit until the slightest amount of pressure you give on your end causes a backfire that leaves you with stumps."

Clara pulled at the back of the Doctor's coat in short, sharp tugs. "Get out of the way, what are you _doing_?" she demanded, as horrified to see him in danger as he'd clearly been about her.

"Something clever," the Doctor said, twisting his head so that the words spilled over his shoulder. He turned to face front again as the woman held the gun up higher, aiming it for the Doctor's chest now that Clara had been tucked away safely out of sight. "Did you not hear me?" he asked the woman.

"Oh I heard you just fine," the woman said, her voice steady even if her hands were shaking. "But that doesn't mean I believe you."

"Sure you don't want to change your mind?" the Doctor asked, matching the woman's calm voice. His hands were steady, one holding the sonic straight, the other stretched out and back, acting as one last barrier between the situation and Clara. She peered out from around him, her hands still on his coat.

"I asked you a question a few seconds ago," the woman said. "Who _are you_?"

The Doctor opened his mouth, perhaps to fire back with something bitter of his own – but he was beaten to it by Clara stepping out from behind him, one hand diving into the pocket of his coat and back out again. She held up the psychic paper and stared at the woman, her face a blank wall, her eyes tilted up to hold the woman's gaze.

"Can you lower your gun now, please?" Clara asked, watching the way the woman's face crumbled at the sight of whatever she saw written on the paper. "It's bad enough you already threatened me, and now you're pointing it right into the chest of my best friend."

The woman took a shuddering breath – and lowered the gun, breaking out into a sob. She all but threw it onto the floor, making Clara and the Doctor jump. Clara hardly had time to react to this, however, for the woman darted forward and threw her arms around Clara's neck, tackling her with a hug that soon turned tearful.

"Thank _God_!" the woman sobbed into Clara's neck. It didn't take Clara long to return the hug, though she was grateful the woman could not see her absolutely dumbfounded expression, mirrored perfectly by the look of shock painted across the Doctor's face. "Oh thank _God_, you're here! I'd thought... I was so _sure _that we would..."

"Hang on," Clara said, detaching herself gently from the woman and holding her at arm's length. "You're the one on that recording – the one who left a message for Blackpoole."

The woman nodded, rubbing her sleeve against her cheeks, mopping up her tears. "My name's Rem," she said. She waved her free hand at the gun on the floor. "I'm sorry about – about that. It wasn't loaded – it's not even _real_, it's a stupid model. I was just – " she heaved a shuddering breath and began to cry again, covering her eyes.

Clara and the Doctor shared a look. Before they could speak, another newcomer appeared – a tall, middle-aged white man gone to seed, his hair mostly gone, his eyes small and bright blue. He looked between Rem and Clara, and the Doctor and the interior of the TARDIS, with a passing, cutting gaze that suggested he approved of very little. That he didn't so much as blink at the impossible space presented to him hinted he was either used to the impossible or he was very much preoccupied – or perhaps he was just that short of imagination.

"Rem! What are you doing?" he blustered, his accent far from American.

Rem turned to greet the man, offering him a wan smile. "It's all right, professor," she said, gesturing to Clara and the Doctor in a short wave. "They're here to help us. This is Clara Oswald, and her partner, Dr. Oswald. They're here to take us home."

Clara, still holding onto the psychic paper, gave it a wave as she mouthed hello. The Doctor simply stared not at Rem or the psychic paper, but at Clara.

"Dr. Oswald?" he said, his tone flat.

"Take us _home_?" This man, the professor, said as he scowled. Clearly he wasn't as easy to convince as Rem had been – but it had been her mind that had projected that answer onto it, after all. The only thing that had come to Clara's mind was the first thing that might work in a situation as dire as this: _anything, anything she needs to see so she can calm down. _

The professor continued. "Now when you say _all _of us Rem, surely you don't mean..."

He trailed off, staring straight ahead of him. His breath was coming out in swirling gray ghosts, lingering at the end of every word. A chill passed between the four of them, making them hiss and shiver where they stood.

The Doctor and Clara stared out the TARDIS doors while Rem turned away, hiding her eyes with a gasp. The professor slowly glanced behind him, moving with the sort of stiffness that screams a plea in every shift. He didn't want to see what was there – but he couldn't stop now that he was moving.

A figure in a long black dress lined with scarlet red was standing a little further down the corridor from which Rem and the professor had taken to arrive at the TARDIS doors. Even at this distance they could hear the figure groan, a groggy, throaty thing, as if they were trying to speak through the choking claw of a noose. A hood was thrown over the figure's head, but a pair of scarlet red eyes could be seen glaring out from the darkness within.

The Doctor held his hand out in front of Clara again, steadying the sonic at this new threat. Rem sank to the floor, still hiding her eyes and weeping once again. Clara could barely understand her, so profound was her grief. It transcended fear. The professor crossed himself, muttering wildly, stammering through a prayer.

The three of them watched as the red-eyed figure extended one arn, revealing a rot-spackled hand whose warped, blue and purple skin was peeled off in stripes, revealing the bones within. It held its hand out and pointed, swooping the fingers in and back, beckoning them closer.

Of course none of them wanted to move. Fear rooted them to the spot.

And that's when Clara heard the voice again. Its laughter transcended the sound of Rem's weeping or the steady, warm presence of the Doctor at her side, hovering, protective, determined to suss out the danger before he declared it too great a threat to help. The voice laughed itself damn near into a fit as the hooded figured gestured once again – pointing at Clara, beckoning to Clara.

_**You're hiding inside – I can see it. I can see your shadow here. It stains every wall behind me. I've been waiting for you – waiting all along, just for you. Come stand beside me.**_

Clara knew that the hooded figure and the voice were not one in the same. She knew, in a branch of logic in which dreams can tell you truths that you simply accept as long as you aren't awake, that this red-eyed figure was no more than a missionary, some kind of assistant akin to Rubicon. They were but the harbinger, a messenger – but why? The voice could talk without their presence, so what else... Why...?

And then Clara knew. The voice was a beacon as the hooded figure, like Rubicon, was a message, a craft, a means of conveyance. They didn't need to work hard to find the source of all the trouble or the one behind the recent horrors and confusion – it had been kind enough to send someone out to see _them._

The figure took one step forward – and yet it was only a few feet from the TARDIS doors now. Much closer than it had just been. The professor began to howl his prayer, stumbling back. The Doctor was shouting, insisting that the figure stop, that they talk to him, that they say or do _something _before they took another step. But the figure did not listen. They took another step – and were just outside the door.

Clara could still hear the voice in her head, its familiar accent making her heart throb, filling it was a silly, stupid, well-adored ache. She took a breath and then made one small step forward, lifting up her hand to reach out for the railing, needing the sort of comfort only iron could give.

But the figure either misinterpreted Clara's movements or took advantage of them. It reached out with its rotted hand and, before instinct made Clara stumble back and pull her hand away, dragged the faintest tips of its fingers against the back of Clara's hand. Just as Rubicon had done. And just like Rubicon, the touch was ice cold, chilling, awful. It stole Clara's breath.

And then she was falling, her vision blurring as black and red lights popped over her eyes, stealing all color and sight. She glanced down at her hand which was trembling, the fingers rigid with pain. A black, inky-blue bruise was spreading over the back of her hand, viciously sore and as unsightly as an infection. But when she tried to shut her eyes to deny the image then pry the eyes back open to welcome the reality, Clara saw only darkness. Her vision was gone, and her consciousness was fading fast behind it.

The last thing she heard before she fell to the floor was the Doctor calling her name.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong>Thanks to those of you who've been patient and enthusiastic for this fic! I know that horror's not really a well-loved genre, but I'm confident I can persuade some people to change their minds, considering just how hopelessly in love these two are and how impossible it is not to write a romance with them in almost every situation, heh. Yes, this fic includes original characters (Rubicon's already one, so you probably should've guessed that might happen?) but I wouldn't worry too much about that. I hope you like them as much as I do.


	5. Always

**Chapter Five**

Clara's cheek slowly lifted off of the cold, clammy surface on which it'd been laying. When she opened her eyes, she realized it was the palm of her hand. She sat up with a start, and noticed that she was on top of a plush, wide bed.

Someone was holding onto her. She blinked once, her vision settling.

Her other hand was resting on the Doctor's palm, her fingers flat and unnaturally straight as he leaned over to examine the bruise that pulsed on the back of her hand. There was an unfamiliar pair of glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, and he frowned as he stared through the lenses, carefully prodding the bruise with the very tip of a long, metal lancet.

Clara hissed, expecting pain. But pain didn't come. She felt nothing but the ice-cold numbness that had followed in the wake of that strange woman's touch – and then her thoughts caught up to her, returning her to the present. She sat up in a straight, fearful line and tried to pull her hand back, but the Doctor's hand closed around hers, holding it in a grip that was as warm as it was firm.

_Like his eyes_. His eyes looked Clara over with close appraisal, the eyebrows folded up to complete the full mask of his scowl.

"Hold still, Clara," he said, and she watched as his thumb moved across her knuckles. Watched because she could barely feel his touch. "I'm almost done here. Then you can flail about in a panic as much as you want."

Clara took a breath and held it in her chest. She bit her lip, then released it. "_Should_ I be panicking?" she asked. Then she closed her eyes and tried the question again. "Do I have another reason to panic – that's... what I meant."

"Well let's see," the Doctor said, and he wet his lips before he took a breath. "A strange voice showed up in your head, a gun was shoved in your face, and a gaunt grim lady poked a tattoo onto the back of your hand – all in the space of a few hours," the Doctor said, laying out the bad news in a neat little list. His voice was so soft and steady that Clara almost wanted to laugh at the unexpected show of tenderness – not to be cruel but because it was so dearly needed, and yet... "And you're asking if you should panic _now_?"

"You forgot the moon," Clara said. "Or the egg. The egg-moon. Whatever it is."

"I didn't forget the moon, I simply didn't mention it," he argued, still gentle, but with a bit more force to the tone. He poked at the bruise again and waited, gauging her reaction not just with his keen gaze but the hold he kept on her hand. "Did that hurt?"

Clara shook her head. "I didn't feel a thing," she said.

The Doctor's frown became more pronounced. Clara didn't like that. She didn't want to be afraid.

"Doctor, tell me you've seen this before. Tell me you know what's happened to me."

"I haven't seen this before," he said. "And I don't know what's happened to you." Clara sensed the apology he didn't say.

This time she did laugh. "Perfect. The one time you're honest."

"My track record isn't as bad as all that," he insisted, but there was less force to his words this time. Less certainty, less faith. Clara didn't want to say it, but sounded like a plea.

If he didn't lie to her, she wouldn't lie either. She would do him the same courtesy of honesty, however raw and ragged it might leave him. It might even be worth it in the end. "The more I see you, when you actually remember to stop by, the more I'm _seeing_ you," she said, shaking her head. "And the more I see the more I'm sure she was wrong."

"Who?"

"Madame Vastra," Clara said.

The Doctor's expression became puzzled, but it cleared quickly as he shifted his weight in the chair and held Clara's hand up. He examined it closely, turning it this way and that under the harsh, pale white light coming from the overhead squares in the ceiling. "Been in touch, have you?" he asked. "Been into her soporific candles again?"

"No. We had a nice little chat after you – regenerated," Clara said. She wouldn't say changed. It wasn't quite that, not really. Well it was but it wasn't. It was still him in there, somewhere inside, with so much new and different on the out. A change that wasn't a change but a becoming – that's what it was. That's the best sense Clara could make of it. "She said you lowered the veil. That you trusted me."

"And you think she's wrong about that," the Doctor guessed, his mouth pulling down at the edges, wrinkles and worries becoming all the more obvious to Clara.

_If he didn't lie to me then I won't lie either. _"I don't think the veil lowered," she clarified, keeping her tone succinct, precise, not wanting to put too much heart into it. Now was not the time, and perhaps there would never be a place for an admission like that. "I think it just... went somewhere else."

The Doctor said nothing. Clara kept her eyes from his face with a noble effort, looking at the bruise on her hand with the detached curiosity she often used when she paused at surgery programs on television. It all seemed to be happening to someone else entirely, a procedure done to someone else's body, and she could separate herself with all the neat sincerity of a viewer's clinical detachment. That she could do it here, now, with herself, might worry Clara if she had enough energy to spare on the emotion, but half of her mind was focused on the conversation at hand and the other was drifting off patient, waiting, bitterly expectant of the voice to return again.

_That voice I've heard before – and I know I've heard it before. _The trouble seemed to be figuring out where, and when, because however familiar it might have started to be these past few hours, there was something else tugging at her, a nagging concept like a hook caught in the corner of her mouth, cutting skin and drawing blood. _Why _was it so bloody familiar? Like an old friend, a dear love?

Again the Doctor prodded the bruise and again Clara waited for the pain. Again, there was nothing.

"What do you think it is?" Clara asked, keeping her fear contained in a tight, hard knot in her chest. So what if it was getting harder to breathe and so what if she could feel herself shake from having to watch the Doctor prod and poke and glare balefully at her hand, disappointed in what he clearly didn't understand? She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't panic. She wouldn't do anything at all but wait. _Keep it together._

"I think it's a problem."

"Besides that."

"I think it's our problem."

"_Besides_ a problem, Doctor."

"I think it's a numbing agent that starts at the area of impact and has the potential to spread its sphere of influence," he said, scowling at the swirls of blue and purple on Clara's hand, how they could mingle together into a hideous puce-tinged brown. "Do you feel any different? In the head, I mean. Fuzzy? Clear? Focused? How about that friend of yours, is he still lingering?"

Clara waited. She shook her head. "I don't hear anything," she said. "But I don't feel much different."

"That's a problem, too," the Doctor said. And Clara said nothing – not because she lacked an argument, but because she agreed, and agreed thoroughly.

The Doctor lowered Clara's hand down and gave it another tight, fleeting squeeze. Clara noticed with a little start that he was wearing gloves.

"Am I contagious?" she asked, nodding to them as she drew back her hand.

The Doctor glanced down at the gloves, stretching out his fingers beneath the taut, black leather. He shrugged once, tilting his head to the side in a non-committal nod. "I don't think you are," he said.

"Then why the protection?"

"I didn't want to hear again."

Clara went very still. "Hear what?"

"Hear you," he said. To his credit he didn't look away from her stare.

"Hear me what?"

"Hear you," he said again, and then added, "in _there." _He tapped his forehead with two fingers, indicating what lay beneath.

Clara's heart became a hard little rock that sat heavy in her chest. "Lingering mental tethers?" she asked, her jaw as stiff as her words.

"It's... _probable_ – highly doubtful, of course, but still within a realm of near-to acceptable probability." The Doctor leaned forward where he sat, holding Clara's gaze and hunching down to her sitting height. There was still that difference between them, even though neither one was on their feet. It reminded Clara of Christmas, and then she shut that thought away tight before it could pull at her again. "And if there _are _any, then they'd be hanging on solely from your end."

Clara continued to stare at him. "That's impossible," she said.

The Doctor's eyebrows shifted, one arching high while the corresponding edge of his mouth twitched. "You've a strange relationship with impossible things, don't you?"

Clara allowed her mouth to relent only in the smallest hints of a smile. So he'd noticed that too. "Seems that way," she said. The Doctor's eyes brightened as he looked at the lift in her smile, and she waited until his own smirk evened out and he had sat up straight again before she finished. "But I know this is different. I know it's – it's definitely, completely, _properly _impossible."

"Why?"

"There's enough of a difference between our minds for you to figure out what one can do and what one can't."

"Yes, but why sell yours short? Maybe you changed while I was away."

"But you weren't gone for long."

"Long enough for something to change."

The Doctor stood up and darted away, somehow a dark, thin shadow even with all this wan, headache-inducing light. Clara took a look around herself for the first time. Judging by the distant humming, they were still in the TARDIS but in an unfamiliar, Spartan room that looked little different from an infirmary. Its walls, floor, and ceiling were white, a terrifying choice of colour for a room designed to treat injuries. There was a supply cabinet across from the bed on which she sat, and a desk pushed against the wall on the right side. The Doctor had borrowed its chair and pulled it over to the bed, but he chose to stand now, pacing over to the desk and pushing around a few papers with idle curiosity, his eyes ticking back and forth as he read.

Clara watched him for a few moments in silence, waiting to see if he'd talk again. When he didn't, she swung her legs down off the bed, placed them flat on the floor, and pushed herself to her feet. Still the Doctor stayed silent, reading the pages on the desk, the tips of his fingers pinning the paper in place. Clara turned to watch him, only a little insulted.

"Doctor? What happened to that... that woman?" Clara thought it was a woman. The hooded black figure certainly hadn't looked fully human, but the impression it left behind both in memory and presence felt strangely feminine to Clara, as if she'd seen something like it before. Not exactly in the same shape, but in the ghastly notion it left behind. _Like a ghost, like someone who'd seen too much too early, with little time to repair._

"Like Rubicon?"

"Sorry?" Clara didn't understand why she should feel the same stinging bite as she did whenever she was caught in a lie, why she should be mildly panicked and even marginally ashamed. All this flew into and around her head, and then back out again when the Doctor drew his eyes of the pages on the desk and faced her, his expression careful, composed, his eyes patient.

"Did she remind you of Rubicon?" he said, repeating the name that filled Clara's heart with dread.

"You know about her."

"I heard you thinking about her."

"That's impossible."

"That word is becoming less likely with the passing minute."

"How else –?"

The Doctor interrupted Clara, and he didn't look happy to do it. She saw the sympathy flash in his eyes again, and he made sure to keep his voice as level as possible, accurately assessing her rising panic. "When I carried you here. We're in the sick bay, to answer your other question. The one to the left of the tinier library and just across from your tea pantry. Didn't want to leave that one question dangling for long. So, yes. I carried you here. That required a bit of touching, as you can imagine." He lifted his hands and wiggled the fingers forward and back in a slow wave. "Hands on arms, nowhere else. Scout's honour."

"Are you a scout?" Clara asked, unable to hide her dismissive snort. "And just the arms? Did you drag me here?" She put a hand to the back of her head and gave it a pat. "Is that why I'm so sore?"

"Your body tends to be your own business, I don't like to pry too much into how it works. And I was once – a scout," he added, noticing her stone-blank expression. "Just a few badges short of a complete sash. But hey, that's not what matters here. What matters is that I _heard _you. I held you and I _heard _you – and you were thinking of one face. One face to go with one name."

Clara folded her arms. She always felt better shielded and ready to stave off all sorts of conversational slings and arrows when her arms were tucked tight against her chest. "And that name was Rubicon?" she asked.

"The very same." The Doctor stepped forward, clapped his hands loud once, rubbed them together, then lowered them down again. "So. The next question – how did you meet her? And why were you thinking of her _then_?"

Clara didn't say anything. _I can't lie to him. Not when he was honest to me. _She held on to that thought for all the worth it could have, grateful that he hadn't given her a lie couched in comfort, grateful that the truth could sting – because it was a sting from which she could learn. No one ever got better with a mouthful of sugar in lieu of proper medicine.

"Because... they reminded me of each other," she said, struggling to find the words. The silence in her head was deafening, the lack of either mocking laughter or ringing, miserable commands as astonishing as it had been when they first arrived. It's not that Clara had grown to like the presence, she was simply trying her best to get used to it. And now it seemed to be gone. "There was something similar about them. Something so sad, so... lost. Only Rubicon was younger than this woman. She was just a child."

Clara looked at the bruise on her hand again. It repulsed her still, but she couldn't help but notice something else. "Rubicon touched my hand here, too. When I didn't believe that she was real, she reached out and just..." Clara trailed off, running her fingers across the bruise. She couldn't feel a thing in her hand, but there was so much fear growing in her heart to make up for the absent pain.

The Doctor waited, but Clara didn't finish. "How did you meet her?" he repeated.

"On the TARDIS."

His eyebrows lifted up high.

Clara cut him off. "If you say impossible, I'll smack you."

"Save the smack for another time, I wasn't going to say a thing."

"You looked it," Clara said. "I saw it on your face."

"Don't assume, Clara. You know how that saying goes."

"Because it makes an as –"

"I said you know it, not that I had to hear it," the Doctor interrupted swiftly, but Clara thought she saw something twinkle in his eyes, something that made the edges of his mouth lift up in an almost unintentional smirk before the gravity of the conversation required him to look as dour and grim as a pallbearer. "What did she say to you?" he asked.

Clara shook her head slowly, part of her hair falling into her face. She moved it out of her eyes and stared off at the floor, not really seeing it anymore, returning her thoughts back to that awful conversation with Rubicon while the Doctor bleated outside the doors. "Riddles, really. She was strange. Spoke more nonsense than she did anything else." Clara's teeth snapped together as she closed her mouth, catching the lie at the tail end.

_You can do better than that, Oswald. So go ahead. Do better. Be better. You always need to be better. _"She said she was a messenger, sent at the request of a friend."

The Doctor opened his mouth, but Clara cut him off with a raised hand.

"Don't ask me what friend because I don't know. She didn't tell me. But this friend – it was a he, I know that much – was apparently... looking forward to seeing me."

"Seeing you or meeting you?" the Doctor asked, his voice low, sombre, the tones of tombs.

Clara shook her head again. "Both?" she guessed, wetting her lips and taking in a quick, stabilizing breath. "Meeting, I think. She said she'd come back when he had something else to say to me. That he was – waiting."

"And she didn't bother to say who?"

Clara thought about Rubicon's narrowed eyes, that crimson, cutting glare. _"__Didn't that man tell you? You really ought to have _listened_, Clara. 'Every lonely monster needs a companion.'" _She shook her head. "Not exactly," she said. "Not clearly."

"And it was in the TARDIS?"

"Exactly in the TARDIS," Clara said. "Where you saw me standing after you came in." The Doctor's puzzled look almost worried her – he remembered, didn't he? It hadn't happened _that _long ago. "She... she passed through the door and unlocked it, Doctor. I didn't do that. I was nowhere near them."

The dumbfounded expression on the Doctor's face scared Clara as badly as the bruise on her hand, the woman who had put it there, and the mystery of Rubicon and the voice all rolled together in one neat, miserable knot of anxiety. She couldn't help but laugh. "You didn't notice?"

"I... assumed you snapped your fingers."

"Well, you know what they say about _that_."

"Shut up," he said, with no heat to the words and no heart in the dismissal.

Clara knew he was trying to ease the tension in the air, but the effort couldn't meet with her full support. There was too much they didn't understand, too much going unsaid, and until one of the two happened (both seemed a miracle far too unlikely for even the Impossible Girl to hope for) she wouldn't let herself relax.

"So you lied," the Doctor said. "Back then, when I came in and saw you in a right state, all eyes, near to tears. You lied."

"Yes, I lied."

"Do you think you'll lie again?"

"About – Rubicon?"

"About anything else," the Doctor said, his voice as tender as the bruise on her hand. She closed both hands into a fist and wished she had pockets to cram them into. The ones in the cardigan were too shallow for anything more than a mint and the remaining nub of an eyeliner pencil. "For as long as you're here."

"I don't want to," Clara said. And she didn't.

"Then why did you?"

"Are you gonna give a lecture, Doctor?" Clara fired back, unable to stop the words.

"No," he said, shaking his head. Clara couldn't look away from his eyes. They were just as sad as they'd always been. So sad and loving, but so closed off all the same. _The veil didn't disappear, it just went somewhere else. _It had gone so far away inside it hung behind every thought, became a stone wall around either one of his hearts. "I know my history. You know it too. Liars don't lecture their own."

Clara's lips tightened as she regarded him, unfolding her arms and letting her hands uncurl, falling open at her sides. "Why does anyone lie?" she asked, not looking at him, not wanting for him to answer. "Because they're scared."

"Are you still scared?"

"Of course I am," she said. "I will be as long as we're – as long as all of this keeps happening. Until it stops."

The Doctor's reaction surprised Clara. He nodded, his eyes still solemn, his voice like the weight of graves. "Good," he said.

Clara stared at him. "Good?" she echoed.

"Very good. And you remember why, don't you?"

At first Clara didn't understand – and then it hit her. Rupert. Rupert _Pink_. The broken soldier. The Doctor's words. The barn. The words she'd given to him in a dream. _"__Fear is a super power. … Fear makes companions of us all."_

"Are you afraid, Doctor?" Clara asked, looking him over, a thought suddenly occurring to her.

The Doctor attempted something like an eye roll, but he found it hard to stop looking at Clara. "More than a little miffed and feeling uncomfortably close to having to refine my current understanding of metaphysical limits – sidebar, they don't exist because there are none in the first place, it's all a load of – "

Clara's eyebrows darted up.

" – stuff," the Doctor finished, his mouth twisting about in a dissatisfied scowl. "And there's also a lingering concern for the current state of the console room when fearful pudding brains are left to their own devices."

Clara considered this. "The woman – the other woman. Rem, was it? And that Professor. Are they here?"

"All present and accounted for," the Doctor said, pushing his hands into his trouser pockets and gritting his teeth. He kicked at the floor once, swinging his boot back so that the toes could jam the floor again. "Locked in, scared out of their wits, begging to be taken home."

Clara watched the Doctor's leg move back and forth. She frowned and looked back up into his eyes again. "So what's the problem?" she asked.

"Is there a problem?"

"It's the word of the day," she pointed out. "Just edged out ahead of _impossible _and _liar_."

"There is no problem," the Doctor said, refining and rephrasing his earlier words. "They asked me to take them home, I said no, I came in here with you and now you're awake. Feel free to tell them the same if they ask you."

"Why should they?"

"Deep cover, remember?" the Doctor said, and he looked, if such a thing were possible, vaguely uncomfortable – dare Clara say embarrassed? "They've got it in their heads that we're sort of... partners. The Doctor and Mrs. Oswald – the double Oswalds. They'll want to get to me through you."

"Isn't that always the way?"

The Doctor stared at Clara in silence. She could feel her smile slip away.

"It was a joke," she said. "I was... trying to joke."

"I know you were trying. So. Will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Will you tell them no when they ask?"

"Are _you_ asking me to?" Clara found it hard to place the Doctor's expression just then. He didn't seem pleading, and he didn't seem mournful either. He looked... He looked the same way he had on the pavement in Glasgow, right after she'd gotten off the phone with him still on Trenzalore. Tired. Heavy-hearted. Lonesome – and sad. So sad. Clara stared into those pale, sad eyes and held her breath, waiting for him to speak again.

"We're here because we want answers," the Doctor said, not shying from the plural. Clara noticed this, noticed his easy use of the pronouns, and told herself not to get too hopeful. _He's just being honest – again. _And yet she hoped he made a habit out of it. "We're here because there's someone who needs our help. We're here because there's someone who thinks it's a good idea to cast every errant thought directly into your head and send along a red-eyed messenger girl where she's not wanted, and certainly doesn't belong."

"It really bothers you that she was in the TARDIS, doesn't it?" Clara asked.

"Of course it does," the Doctor insisted, his words carrying along the same bite that a steel trap might. Clara didn't feel any of its malice. She knew its wrath was not meant for her. "It's my ship, my home. Can't have a whole unholy host storming in when they feel like passing along interstellar memos, can I?"

"What if she was looking for help?" Clara asked, reaching for a concept she knew might be far-fetched but still worth offering up. "What if the other one was, too? The woman in the hood, the one who –?"

"Then that's one more reason why we can't leave," the Doctor said. "We've got a nice list going, you might want to write them down in case Rem and her Professor pal think to get a word in edgewise." And then, to Clara's tremendous surprise, he held out his hand. He was still wearing the gloves. Clara didn't move to take his hand.

"We should go back to them," he said. "Give them the bad news face to face."

"What about the other woman?" she asked. "How did you get rid of her?"

"It's funny you ask that," the Doctor said, and he began to pull back his hand. Clara reached out for it at once before the offer could fade. He seemed to wince from the sudden, snapping gesture, but when Clara gave him a warm smile and his hand a comforting squeeze, his shoulders lowered again and the wince passed.

"Why's it funny?" she asked. "Go on, explain."

"It's funny you ask if I got rid of her, because I... may not have done that at all."

Clara's face fell. "You didn't?"

"I didn't."

"Then what did you – ?"

"Remember what I said earlier? About the pair of them being locked in and scared out of their wits?" the Doctor asked. He waited for Clara to nod before he continued, and it was his turn to hold on tightly to her hand, as if the contact could allow him to better guess at the exact time and depth of her impending wrath. "She might be the reason why they're the latter," he said.

"You've trapped them in the console room with her?" Clara asked.

"Trapped is an ugly word," the Doctor said, and Clara was relieved to see he looked offended at her use of the word. "Loudly and gently encouraged to stay put is how I'd phrase it."

Clara didn't let go of his hand. She pulled on it instead, yanking him hard as she turned and led the way out of the room. "We're going back there. We're going back there right now and you're going to apologise for shaving whole decades off their lives – and you're going to get rid of the other one. That woman, that – "

"She has a name," Clara heard the Doctor say, in between bursts of aggravated mumbles of pain (_I'm barely holding him, he can't really be hurting_, Clara thought, but she lessened her hold all the same).

"And that is?"

"Harper," the Doctor said. Clara slid to a stop and he nearly collided with her back, but caught himself at the last moment, one hand on her shoulder, the other trapped inside her cold, trembling fingers. "First name Rubicon."

Clara stood motionless in the hallway that led back to the console room. The TARDIS hummed around them, a comforting lull that she once preferred to any sort of ambience or classical piece her Gran insisted was perfect for clearing the mind of its muckier, thorn-ridden thoughts. But now the humming felt alien, detached, like the muffled shriek of a machine's flatline.

"How is that possible?" Clara asked. "I've seen Rubicon before, she didn't – they didn't look anything like each other." Clara shook her head, not to deny what the Doctor had said but to shake off the weight of fear that was pressing in tight like nails under her skin. "Doctor – how is that possible?"

"You can ask her when you see her," the Doctor said, his words succinct, his voice gentle. "I'm sure she'd be willing to talk to you. She's quite happy we didn't leave her outside the ship alone."

The Doctor ran his thumb over the back of Clara's hand in a tender pet, waiting for her to detach herself, knowing the moment was coming, that any second now she would turn away and leave him empty, silent, frozen.

Clara turned to face him instead. She still held on to his hand, and he felt his hearts press down to fit in her small grasp. Small but certainly not little – she had a reach that went beyond horizons, that spanned full fathoms deep and could dig right down to the tender, aching parts that defied words and needed to be hidden in veils. She was down so far, rooted so deep, and yet sometimes the Doctor was still sure she couldn't see.

Now was not one of those times. Now he was sure, quite sure, that those large, brown eyes were not only looking at him but _seeing _him, seeing and searching and showing the need that would always be within. A need he could meet and echo in return.

"You'll be there?" she asked.

"Right there with you," he said at once. "In arm's reach."

"Good," Clara said, nodding once, putting her heart into every word. "You stay there, Doctor. You stay right there."

"Always," the Doctor said. And in that moment Clara knew with a little thrill of awe that it was not a lie.

They walked back to the console room together, hand in hand, side by side. And the voice in Clara's head stayed silent, listening with continued rapt attention.


End file.
